Chola Nadu · Eastern Coastal Plains
Chola Nadu's periodisation is set by the anicut and by the court, not by Delhi. Its medieval period opens around 848, when Vijayalaya took Thanjavur — three and a half centuries earlier than the medieval period begins in the northern plains — and runs through the imperial Cholas, the Pandyas who displaced them, and the Nayaka governors who followed Vijayanagara. Its modern period begins in 1674–75, when the Thanjavur throne passed to a Maratha line, and not in 1757 or 1857: the Maratha century is when the delta acquired the institutions it is still known by — a palace library, a court dance and music repertoire, a printing press twenty miles up the coast, and four European administrations inside one delta. Authority here was never only dynastic. Revenue, irrigation and temple endowment were administered by the ur, the sabha and the nattar — village and district assemblies whose proceedings the temple walls record in more detail than they record any king.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The Sangam-age Cholas held Uraiyur inland and the port of Puhar at the Kaveri mouth, but nearly everything said about them comes from poetry — Pattinappalai, the Purananuru, and later the Silappadikaram — and is literary rather than documentary. The delta's early wealth is better attested by what moved through it: Mediterranean pottery and coin on the coast, and a rice surplus that presupposes control of the river. The Grand Anicut across the Kaveri, still distributing water today, is by tradition credited to Karikala; the structure is genuinely ancient, but the attribution rests on literature and not on inscription. From roughly the third to the sixth century the delta is thinly documented, and from the late sixth to the mid-ninth it lay under Pallava and then Pandya overlordship, with the Cholas reduced to local chiefs.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3rd century BCE – 3rd century CE | Sangam-age Chola chiefs are recorded at Uraiyur and at the port of Puhar (Kaveripumpattinam); the record is literary. |
| c. 1st–2nd century CE | Ports on this coast trade with the Roman Mediterranean; Greek and Latin sources name harbours on the Coromandel. |
| c. 2nd century CE (traditional) | The Kallanai, the Grand Anicut, is attributed by tradition to Karikala Chola. The dam is ancient; the attribution is literary, not epigraphic. |
| c. 300–575 | Poorly documented centuries; later inscriptions refer back to an interruption of the older kingships, conventionally called the Kalabhra period. |
| c. 575–848 | The delta lies under Pallava and then Pandya overlordship; the Cholas survive as local chiefs at Uraiyur. |
Vijayalaya's capture of Thanjavur around 848 turned a local chiefship into a state, and within a century and a half the delta was paying for the largest building programme in the peninsula. What made that possible was administration rather than conquest. Rajaraja I's survey of 1000 reassessed the land and reorganised the country into valanadus; revenue orders, temple endowments and assembly decisions were cut into stone, which is why the Chola state is better documented than most medieval polities anywhere. The imperial phase ended in 1279, after which the delta passed to the Pandyas, was raided from Delhi in 1311, and from 1378 was governed from Vijayanagara through Nayaka deputies. The Thanjavur Nayakas from 1532 — Sevappa, Achuthappa, Raghunatha, Vijaya Raghava — kept the temple supply trades and the court repertoire in place and began the manuscript collection that later became the Saraswati Mahal.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 848 | Vijayalaya takes Thanjavur from the Muttaraiyar and makes it his seat. |
| 985–1014 | Rajaraja I. The land survey and reassessment of 1000 reorganises the country into valanadus; the Rajarajesvaram (Brihadisvara) temple at Thanjavur is dated to 1010. |
| c. 1006 | The Larger Leiden copper plates record Rajaraja I assigning village revenue to the Chudamani Vihara at Nagapattinam, a Buddhist monastery built by the ruler of Srivijaya. |
| 1014–1044 | Rajendra I. A northern expedition reaches the Ganges about 1023; a new capital is founded at Gangaikonda Cholapuram; a naval expedition is sent against Srivijaya about 1025. |
| 1279 | Rajendra III is the last of the imperial line; the delta passes to the Pandyas. |
| 1311 | Malik Kafur's expedition from Delhi reaches the Tamil country. |
| 1532 | Sevappa Nayak is granted Thanjavur under Vijayanagara; the Nayaka line holds it until 1673. |
| 19 November 1620 | The Danish East India Company establishes a trading post at Tharangambadi by agreement with Raghunatha Nayak, and builds Fort Dansborg. |
In 1674–75 Venkoji, sent south from Bijapur, took Thanjavur for himself, and the delta acquired a Marathi-speaking court above a Telugu-speaking one above a Tamil countryside — which is why the region's vocabulary, its court music and its palace records are trilingual. The Dutch had taken Nagapattinam in 1660 and made it their Coromandel headquarters in 1690; the French took Karaikal in 1739; the Danes at Tharangambadi had a printing press by 1712. The court's last active decades under Serfoji II are the ones that show: he ceded the civil administration to the East India Company in 1799 and spent the following thirty-three years on a library, a school, a hospital and one of the longest historical inscriptions anywhere. The kingdom lapsed in 1855. What survived was everything that had never depended on it — the bronze casters, the weavers, the nagaswaram turners and the Carnatic repertoire.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1674–1675 | Venkoji (Ekoji) takes Thanjavur; the Bhonsle line rules there until 1855. |
| 1712–1714 | A printing press is set up at Tharangambadi; the Tamil New Testament is printed there in 1714, following Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg's arrival in 1706. |
| 1739 | The French acquire Karaikal, which remains a French possession into the 1950s. |
| 1781 | The British take Nagapattinam from the Dutch after naval action off this coast; the Dutch formally cede it in 1784. |
| 1799 | By treaty Serfoji II cedes the civil administration of Thanjavur to the East India Company, retaining the fort, a fifth of the land revenue and a pension. |
| 1845 | Denmark sells Tharangambadi to Britain. |
| 1855 | On the death of Shivaji Bhonsle without a male heir, Thanjavur lapses to the Company and the kingdom ends. |
| 13–30 April 1930 | The Vedaranyam salt march reaches the coast from Tiruchirappalli; salt law is broken on the Vedaranyam flats. |
Rulers and commanders
The chief around whom the delta's founding account is built: Sangam poems credit him with victory at Venni and with embanking the Kaveri, and later tradition credits him with the Grand Anicut. He should be read as a literary figure with a probable historical core, not as a documented reign.
Dynasty: Early (Sangam-age) Cholas. Seat: Uraiyur
Took Thanjavur and made it a capital, converting a subordinate chiefship into the state that his successors turned into an empire. Everything the delta is known for architecturally dates from after him.
Dynasty: Imperial Cholas. Seat: Thanjavur
Built the Rajarajesvaram at Thanjavur, dated to 1010, and — more consequentially — ordered the land survey of 1000 that reassessed the delta and reorganised it into valanadus. His inscriptions record temple staff, endowments and revenue in a detail no other Indian dynasty of the period matches.
Dynasty: Imperial Cholas. Seat: Thanjavur
Moved the capital to a new foundation north of the Kollidam, sent an expedition to the Ganges about 1023 and a fleet against Srivijaya about 1025. The Southeast Asian expedition is the reason the delta's port towns kept a maritime record for the next two centuries.
Dynasty: Imperial Cholas. Seat: Gangaikonda Cholapuram
Commanded Kulottunga I's Kalinga campaign. What is known of the campaign comes chiefly from Jayamkondar's Kalingattupparani, a court poem, so its scale should be read as literary claim rather than record.
Dynasty: Imperial Cholas (under Kulottunga I). Seat: Thanjavur
The offices that actually ran the delta. The ur was the assembly of an ordinary village, the sabha that of a brahmadeya, and the nattar the body of a whole nadu; between them they allotted irrigation turns, leased and sold land, administered temple endowments and collected revenue. Their resolutions survive by the thousand on temple walls, and are the reason Chola administration can be reconstructed at all.
Dynasty: Chola-era institutions. Seat: Delta villages and nadus
Sent south from Bijapur after the Nayaka line collapsed in 1673, he kept Thanjavur for himself and founded a Maratha court that lasted 180 years and gave the delta its third court language.
Dynasty: Thanjavur Bhonsles. Seat: Thanjavur
Ceded the civil administration of the kingdom to the East India Company in 1799 and then governed what was left of it as an institution-builder: the Saraswati Mahal Library, the Dhanvantari Mahal where Ayurvedic, Unani, Siddha and European practitioners recorded case sheets together, a school, and the Bhonsle dynastic inscription on the Brihadisvara wall.
Dynasty: Thanjavur Bhonsles. Seat: Thanjavur
The history of Chola Nadu from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)