Early Cholas (Sangam age)

01Named by Ashoka

Ashoka’s second and thirteenth rock edicts list the Cholas with the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras and the Keralaputras as peoples beyond his rule, to whom he sent medicine for men and animals and envoys of dhamma. That is the oldest written mention of the Chola name. The Tamil poems of the Sangam anthologies, the Purananuru above all, give the kings themselves: their quarrels, gifts to poets, battles and funerals. Their emblem was the tiger, and their river the Kaveri, whose yearly flood made the delta the rice bowl of the south.

02Karikala

Karikala, son of Ilamchetchenni, came to the throne young. At Venni, near Thanjavur, he defeated the Chera and Pandya kings together with eleven chieftains; the Chera, wounded in the back, starved himself to death rather than live with the shame. The Porunararruppadai praises the battle, and the Pattinappalai, a long poem for which Karikala is said to have paid the poet sixteen lakh gold pieces, describes Puhar: warehouses stamped with the tiger seal, horses landed from ships, and streets of foreign traders. Later Chola copper plates credit him with raising the banks of the Kaveri, and the Kallanai, the old stone anicut across the river, is held in tradition to be his work.

Place · Port of the early Cholas at the mouth of the Kaveri, Sangam agePoompuhar (Kaveripattinam)Puhar, where the Kaveri meets the sea, was the port-capital of the early Cholas, the city of Kovalan and Kannagi in the Silappatikaram. The Manimekalai says the sea swallowed it, and traces of its wharves lie on the shore and under the water.Read →

03Kochenganan and the long eclipse

Perunarkilli is called in the Purananuru the one who performed the Rajasuya. Kochenganan, who defeated the Chera at Kazhumalam in the battle sung in the Kalavazhi Narpathu, built temples to Shiva on raised platforms, maadakkoil, that elephants could not climb; the Shaiva tradition counts him among the sixty-three Nayanars and Tirumangai Alvar praises him too. After the 3rd century the Kalabhras overran the Tamil country and the Cholas shrank to local chiefs around Uraiyur, later serving the Pallavas. In about 848 CE Vijayalaya Chola took Thanjavur, and from him grew the imperial Cholas.

The rulers

1. 1IlamchetchenniFather of KarikalaSangam age
2. 2KarikalaVictor at Venni; Kaveri embankmentsSangam age (c. 2nd century CE, debated)
3. 3NalankilliFought his kinsman Nedunkilli for UraiyurSangam age
4. 4NedunkilliSangam age
5. 5KillivalavanPraised in many Purananuru poemsSangam age
6. 6PerunarkilliPerformed the RajasuyaSangam age
7. 7KochengananNayanar; built raised Shiva templeslate Sangam age

What they left

• The Kallanai on the Kaveri, held to be Karikala’s work
• Puhar, the port of the Silappatikaram and the Pattinappalai
• The Chola name and tiger emblem, revived by Vijayalaya’s line
• Kochenganan’s maadakkoil temples