Maritime Power, Commerce, and Temple Networks in the Chola Naval Expansion, 900-1200 CE

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between naval power, long-distance commerce, and temple institutional networks in the overseas expansion of the imperial Chola dynasty between the reign of Rajaraja I (r. 985-1014) and the decline of Chola maritime dominance in the late twelfth century. Drawing on Tamil copper-plate inscriptions, the Tanjore temple records, Chinese Song dynasty annals, and the archaeological evidence from port sites across the Bay of Bengal littoral, as well as the analytical frameworks developed by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Kenneth Hall, and Hermann Kulke, the study argues that Chola naval expansion was not a form of territorial imperialism oriented toward conquest and administrative incorporation but a commercially motivated projection of political authority designed to secure, regulate, and tax the maritime trade circuits of the Bay of Bengal and the Straits of Malacca. The article traces three interlocking dimensions of this expansion: the organization of the Chola naval apparatus and its relationship to the merchant guild networks of the Tamil coast, the political economy of the 1025 CE raid on Srivijaya and its consequences for the restructuring of Bay of Bengal commerce, and the role of South Indian temple institutions as nodes of commercial credit, cultural diplomacy, and diaspora community organization across the Southeast Asian trading world. The Chola case demonstrates that pre-modern Indian Ocean imperialism operated through mechanisms of commercial dominance and ritual prestige rather than through territorial occupation, and that the temple institution functioned as the principal organizational vehicle through which Tamil commercial and cultural influence was projected and sustained across maritime Southeast Asia. The gradual contraction of Chola maritime power after 1150, driven by the rise of competing commercial polities in Southeast Asia and the internal agrarian pressures generated by the costs of continuous military campaigning, serves as the article's terminus and provides a framework for understanding the structural limits of commercially motivated maritime imperialism in the pre-modern Indian Ocean world.