289. Medieval India’s Game of Thrones: The Cholas (Part 1)

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnhem. and me, William de Rimpel. And we hope you enjoyed this series on sewers with Alex von Tinselman, which I think is our most popular ever series. The first episode. Blockbuster. The blockbuster. Absolutely. I just loved it. We had so many comments on Twitter, particularly Anita's hot crush for Gamal Abdel Nasser, the pinup. What I found, actually, rather than Nasser being very good looking, undisputably very good looking, and we know it's undisputable because it got right up Anthony Eaton's nose. and you know what I loved was the psychodrama of the whole situation so I mean those of you haven't gone to listen go back and listen Eden is completely convulsed with the idea that his younger much younger much prettier wife may be falling under the thrall of a dashing NASA and I just I love that with Alex you know you get the sort of the big characters of history but yeah they're humans aren't they at the end of the day flesh and blood with all of the insecurities that we will carry.

1:30That's an extraordinary story. Anyway, as you may be aware, because we've been putting it up online, we will soon be starting another Middle Eastern series. And this is on the history of Gaza, which I don't think anyone has done. I've been looking online for, you know, any broadcaster in the world has actually done this, which is bizarre, considering it's been in the headlines of every single newspaper every day for the last two years. Starting all the way back with the Egyptian pharaoh Tutmosis III through the crusades, through the British mandate and the Nakba up to the rise of Hamas. Of course.

2:06I mean, one of the reasons perhaps that nobody has done this is that it is emotional, tricky, a difficult thing to discuss, but we think everyone should perhaps have an insight into the history behind the headlines. It's a huge and obviously very controversial and emotional and exciting thing to do. But before we do that, we're going to give you a little palate cleanser, a little sorbet in between your two Middle Eastern courses. And we are going to go and take you back just for one week into medieval Indian history and a piece of Indian history that has always fascinated me. In many ways, it's India's own Game of Thrones.

2:43And I think people in South India know this history very well and are very proud of it. But even people in the North don't cover this. And I think it's one of the great stories from India. And it's the story of the Chola Kingdom, which from the 10th century expanded outwards, not just in India, but into Southeast Asia and raided as far as Singapore and the Malacca Straits. And the reason I'm fully invested is because there is a woman at the heart of this story, one of these sort of kick-ass queens of history, who is responsible for the rise of one of India's most iconic images. Now, you'll know it.

3:16If I could say Nataraja, You might not recognize what that means, unless you are from India, but the dancing Shiva. Now, you'll know that figure. It's sort of normally surrounded in a circle, sort of sometimes embellished with flames. With the dancing god, a drum in one hand, his third eye opened, doing the dance of destruction. It is exactly that image that inspired a Christian hymn writer to come up with Lord of the Dance. I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. So, look, we hope you really like this because we love making it. Our king, sweet ambrosia to me, abides in the dancing hall of southern Telai, humming with tuneful bees, shrine radiating light like a blaze of lightning circled by towers with fluttering white flags, a golden mountain rising before us.

4:08when shall I attain him? King, you dance on stage before the three thousand Brahmin priests, when shall I get to see your dance? Father, in the shrine of Shadhan Tilai, where bees humming tunes sing the four Vedas, chanted by your three thousand priests, who serve you in utter devotion, when will I get to see you dance in Ampalam Hall? The immortal crowned with the moon, the king of the golden ampalam hall in tilai sprout of wisdom when shall i join him when the whole world beseeched him he graced patanjali with a vision of his dance dances in the golden ampalam hall in tilai and the gods worship him there when shall i see him it's a very nice start i got you very nice when shall i see him i was gonna say well well look We see him.

5:04He's here. William Dalrymple and Anita Arnand for a very special Empire podcast. Anyway, I should explain what all that was about. So that poem is about the god who became the greatest icon in all Indian art, the dancing Shiva. It's that round statue of the god with one leg raised with fire in his hand that's become, in a sense, a shorthand for Indian art. Well, the one that we call the Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. Lord of the Dance, which then inspired, weirdly, the Christian hymn, Lord of the Dance. You ever brought up? Well, I did. I mean, I know the Lord of the Dance hymn, but I didn't think it was a direct dance.

5:44Then wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he. It was a Quaker who had, for some reason, an image of the dancing Shiva on the front of his desk. Good Lord. And he thought that he was going to be accused of heresy for writing this hymn. And it actually took off and become one of the most popular Christian hymns, bizarrely. although 99 % of the people that listen to that, to hear more sing it, have no idea that it's referring to the dancing. I will lead you all wherever you may be. I will lead you all in the dance, said he. I know it very well. That's the very one I'm very impressed, Anita.

6:08Thank you very much. A common educated girl. Very much so. Sister Francesca would burst with pride, indeed. Anyway, we are here because we are meeting with one of the great meteors of Indian history, Anirudh Kanesetti, who although still in his early or mid-twenties. I'm 30. You're 30, but you still look... You wear it very lightly. You wear it very lightly, Edward. In a kind of sickening kind of way. He looks very young. Anyway, this is not his first, but his second book. Both books have been met with astonishing acclaim. And the new book is called Lords of the Earth and Sea, A History of the Chola Empire.

6:46Now, Edward, first of all, you should explain, for most of our readers and listeners, will absolutely not know who the Cholas are. So give us a very basic explanation of who these people we're going to talk about for the next two episodes. Well, if you were to imagine Europe at the turn of the first millennium CE, you'd see a world very much in flux. The great kingdoms that we are most familiar with in Europe, Norman England, for example, does not exist. The Unified Kingdom of France does not exist. But at the same time, on the other side of the globe, Raja Rajachola, a title which means King of Kings, was preparing to build the most stupendous monument that had been seen in centuries, really since the construction of the pyramids.

7:27The tallest temple, and what will remain the tallest temple? The tallest temple on earth for quite a long time. Until probably the building of what, Angkor what, a couple of centuries later? It's much taller than Angkor. Is it? Really? I think it's only Westminster Abbey in the 13th century that manages to top the Cholas. So that's astonishing. And just give us a geographical location. So the Cholas are based in the deep south of India, present-day state of Tamil Nadu, On the Coromandel coast, which, as it happens, actually derives from Chola Mandalam, or the Chola Circle, which is, of course, what they call their home territories.

8:00I didn't know Coromandel came from that. That's delicious. That's where it comes from. And the English word cash, according to one of three possible etymologies, might be derived from kasu, which is a Tamil word which refers to a coin. Portuguese traders use the term, I think it's pronounced kasha, because of the kasu. and we also see the same term used in records from the British Raj as well. It's one of three possible etymologies that should be perfectly clear, but the Cholas have a much, much bigger impact on the world economy and the way the world functions than we otherwise give them credit for.

8:32Anirudh, anyone that's read medieval Indian history, particularly anyone who's not familiar with India, often comes across this blur of different dynasties with long, complicated naims, the Ikvashkus, the Rastrakutas, the Chalukyas. Why have you chosen particularly the Cholas to concentrate on? What distinguishes them? What makes them stand out from the run of the mill of all these different mandalas, as historians call them, these circles of different competing kings? Well, think of the Cholas as essentially the Mongols of the medieval Indian Ocean world. It's directly as a result of Chola conquests that you see new forms of economies, more interlinked regional circuits in the Indian Ocean world.

9:13And you'll see the development of Hinduism in its most recognizable form. As you said a bit earlier, well, Nataraja, the most famous symbol of Hinduism. And it's not even a comparison. Like, by far, I think he is the most iconic symbol of his religion. Oh, sure. Apart from Ganesh, there is only one other image people will think of. It's really Nataraja. Which is the Lord of the Dance. Can I ask you one other thing? I mean, the politics, though, of the Chawlas. The Chawlas, we hear a lot. Because in politics right now, they will talk about the Marathas and the Chawlas. These are the two they've kind of, or am I imagining this?

9:44The two that are often... And Vijayanagara, the kings of Hampi. Yeah, sort of highlighted and spoken about as the zenith of India's greatness. Well, the Cholas, I think, also speak to a contemporary Indian anxiety about our influence in the world at large. The Cholas were this martial, aggressive, but also tremendously innovative dynasty that took Indian polities, Indian diasporas to shows where they hadn't been present at the same scale before. I think they speak to a very contemporary anxiety, a contemporary yearning for India to be a world superpower again, to be able to boss around our neighbors again.

10:19And in the Cholas, it seems that we found a Hindu dynasty that does exactly that, even though to the Cholas it was more of a commercial enterprise than anything else, as hopefully we'll get into in this conversation. The reason I think that Hindu nationalists love the idea of the church is not only did they march from the south of India right up famously to the Ganges and conquer uniquely a South Indian dynasty conquering the north rather than the reverse, which is what happens in most of Indian history. There's also this thing which we'll be discussing, particularly in the next episode, about this extraordinary moment, almost unique in Indian history, when an Indian naval force leaves the shores of India and raids and possibly even conquers the Malacca Straits, areas of Thailand and Malaysia, Laos.

11:07And the claims are made for the whole of Southeast Asia. Even as far as the Maldives, this is a huge expanse. And Lakshadweb. Yeah. So there's this vast area. which is and anirud we should say we should explain has stepped into this debate with some very clear clear views which you hinted at just then that a lot of it you think is is the power of the equivalent in remember in game of thrones the iron bank that oh yes that those sort of mysterious trade if you really want to know yes with the iron bank um in some ways children is a bit like that because they have these the 500 this this mysterious trading guild which has its It's an army, it's assassins.

11:46Tell us about the 500s. So who were they and where did they get their money from? Well, the really important thing to understand about medieval India is that I think we tend to think of it as a land of kings and peasants. These, well, the Hindu nationalist imagination, these ultra masculine kings. In the Orientalist imagination, these are foppish kings sitting around in the harem. But the idea is that it's a world of kings and peasants. But the reality of medieval South India, specifically the place where the Cholas came from, is it's a land of assemblies. It's a land of collective rule, where villages are handling their own affairs.

12:16Well, like panchayats that we think of today, sort of like a local democracy. Something like that, yes. It's essentially, the thing is that private property as a concept doesn't really exist at this point of Indian history. These are all collectively owned lands which a bunch of families are cultivating. And of course, these families take the decisions about what needs to happen to the land. The king has very little to do with that. And this idea, this idea of collective decision-making extends to everything in this part of India, especially to commerce. So very often decisions about finance and what goods need to be imported where and what tariffs need to be paid on these goods are not being taken by royal courts, but by merchant assemblies.

12:54I should say that in my book, The Golden Road, I came across your 500, this extraordinary guild, very frequently because they leave inscriptions right across Southeast Asia, which you can read today in places like Singapore and Sumatra, long way away from India, recording what sounds a bit like a sort of proto-East India company, just like the East India company founds trading settlements at Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. So you get the equivalent with the 500, this Tamil merchant guild, establishing outposts where you're getting Tamil inscriptions, Chorah-style temples, little sort of goldsmiths touchstones with little Tamil inscriptions associated with the guild.

13:32So you've got a whole trading world that's suddenly illuminated. So what we're going to be discussing in the next two episodes are these extraordinary kings associated also with merchant guilds who extend their influence right across India and project it deep into Southeast Asia, whether controversially, as you say, through the trading guilds or directly through their own navies. And this is something we'll be discussing in the next episode. But let's just open now with your account of the rise of the Cholas. How out of this landscape of villages that you've beautifully painted in this rich soil around the rivers, particularly the Kavri River in South India, how does this one dynasty rise up and really establish itself over this vast area?

14:17It's this rhythmic, almost seasonal process. Yes, the main source that we have to reconstruct the rise of the Cholas is inscriptions made in temples. But the really interesting thing is that I want you to imagine this landscape of the Kaferi, this lush green of villages with muddy canals between them. And all these villages have at their center a little temple of mud brick and wood. All the houses are mostly mud hovels. you might see the occasional large whitewashed mansion of an esquire, a member of the gentry, or you might see a more well-maintained little settlement of Brahmins who own the lands surrounding them.

14:57And very occasionally, in between this very variegated landscape, will you see market towns, and even more rarely than the market towns are royal courts. It's important to remember the Cholas, it was by no means evident in the early 10th century, the Cholas were going to emerge as the great superstars of medieval South India. They were loomed over by the Great Deccan Plateau, this vast landmass the size of Germany, this tri-arid upland region home to great and terrible empires that would raid the coastal areas of the Kaviri where the Tamil speakers lived. And the Tamil speakers lived in these assemblies, in these villages that we've just seen.

15:35In your last book, you particularly talked about the Rashtrakutas, who again were one of these kingdoms that are in the textbooks. and it's a name that has almost no resonance because we don't particularly associate any sort of particular... Well, in the West, they will never have heard of that word. Most people will never have heard of them. But you showed that the Rashtrakutas who were in the Deccan were in fact considered one of the four great world powers of the 8th century. We have Arab travellers' accounts that describe the Rashtrakutas as being on par with the Abbasid Caliph, with the Emperor of China, with the Byzantine Emperor.

16:05You have to keep in mind that when you're talking about the rise of the Cholas, we're talking about them in the shadows of what was considered to be one of the greatest empires of the age. So, I mean, let's do it through archaeological record. I just want to paint a picture of what the choilers were and how they lived. So are we talking about noble class that wears gold and jewels and bling and shows off their wealth and power that way? And a merchant class, I mean, what do they look like? What do they spend? What is kind of the wealth that we are looking at in the archaeological index? What we're looking at is it's a very diverse society where it isn't actually possible to draw this very clear line sometimes.

16:42Because in medieval satin, it is possible for a merchant to be a landowner, to be a courtier, and vice versa. The lines weren't as clear as they later became. Merchants could be warriors. Sure. I suppose what I'm asking is that most people, particularly who don't live in India, even in India, they think of the Mahabharata, they think of the big golden crowns, the big jeweled bandoliers. That's the image they have of wealth and power. And I just want to know, in comparison with what we've been taught is wealth and power, where did the Cholas kind of rank? Well, to a great extent, I would say our image of what medieval India looked like comes from Chola images.

17:19It's because Chola bronzes are everywhere in Western museum collections. It's because you see these great jeweled bracelets on their arms. You see these towering tiered crowns and these body necklaces made of thousands of pearls stretched across the body. But we should also say, I mean, and this is what strikes the Western observer when they see those brothers of the first time wearing very little else except that. Except jewels and gold and bling. And they are incredibly sexy and largely unclothed figures with only the slight sign of sort of ripples of cloth around their ankles. I would dare anyone who is startled by the Chola's lack of clothing to wear more clothing than that in the heat of the Caleri summer and see how they go.

18:02Right, right, right, right, right. Right. As Mahatma Gandhi famously said, was it George III who summoned him to Buckingham Palace when he was asked why he was only just wearing a lungi? He said, his majesty is wearing enough for both of us. So the aristocratic class of this 10th century village-dominated world weren't as wealthy as they later became. All these bronzes are produced when the cholas are at the height of the superstardom when they've conquered the treasuries of rival kingdoms. So you can imagine that, yes, they did have some amount of jewelry, but they won't have looked that different from most people who lived at the time.

18:37Right. Okay. And take us through the beginning of their rise, because in previous episodes of this podcast, we've talked about the Pallavas in Kachipuram. Again, South Indian kings who are trading with Southeast Asia and taking their ideas of Hindu kingship to Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam. The Cholas, in a sense, rise to power over the Pallavas, don't they? So the Cholas are in this very interesting geopolitical situation where the Kaveri being a land of these independent villages wasn't a place where kings really enjoyed projecting too much power. So the Pallavas are off to their north, far to the south are a rival dynasty called the Pandyas, and neither the Pallavas nor the Pandyas can figure out what the hell to do with the Kaveri area because it is too independent.

19:22So by playing these kings off against each other, the early Cholas managed to rise up into this political vacuum. In the late 9th century, the last Palawa king dies in battle near the Kaveri area, in fact. And this is what really allows the Cholas to rise, because all of a sudden, there's this vast urban, commercially rich territory up to their north. The gate is open and they can walk straight through, right. In your book, you have this lovely description of this battle where the Pandyas of Madurai, who are the rival power, summon the kings of Sri Lanka from over the waters. and the two of them fight the Cholas, but the Cholas defeat them and eventually drive them back.

20:01And then in a startling new development, the Cholas are the first Indian power to project their armies over the sea to Sri Lanka. So we see what is initially a South Indian army fighting an invasion, reversing that radically and suddenly leading warships over the Palk Strait into Sri Lanka. Tell us about all that. It must have been an absolutely bizarre development for the early Chola kings to suddenly be on the dominant side of a war. As you said, Will, the Pandyas and the Sri Lankans were the most powerful of the South Indian kings. There was no reason for them to expect that they would not be able to conquer the Cholas.

20:44But not only do the Cholas hold their own in battle, there's an attack of this terrible disease in the Lankan camp. We're not sure exactly what it was. Smallpox? It may have been smallpox. it may have been malaria in the marshes of the Kaveri delta, but the Sri Lankan crown prince dies on India's shore and the Lankans have to retreat with their tail between their legs. But the Cholas don't leave it at that. The way that medieval Indian polities worked is that kings would go to war when once in between the harvest season and the planting season, you would have a whole bunch of time when the village toughies were waiting for employment, the king would come along, take them off to war, and the loot that they would get, They would give it to their wives once they came back from the campaign.

21:24And their wives would invest it in temples. So I talked a little earlier about how all these villagers have their own little brick temple. And what Chola queens would do is they use the wealth their husbands got from war to rebuild these temples in stone with, of course, a little description of their husbands' martial exploits. Well, you have entirely beautifully led us to a break here. Because when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about arguably the greatest Chola queen of all time. think Xena think warrior princess think also Medici roll it all into one join us after the break and we'll explain welcome back so just before the break I was sort of teasing you about this great character who predictably I have fallen head over heels in love with like I do with a powerful woman Sembian Mahadevi who is largely responsible for giving the world this Nataraja image that you will find in most Hindu households, in most temples, and indeed in most Western collections of Hindu art.

22:27And above all, and most famously now, in CERN, in the, in the, what's it called? The Collider. The Collider. The Hadron Collider. The Hadron Collider. When you walk into CERN, there is a giant Chola Natraj sitting in the, in the main entrance hall of CERN, apparently. Just remind me one day to tell you, I've been there when it was turned off and we walked through the tunnel. That's when the beer bottle got put in there. Famously, there was a beer bottle found in the collider. No, that wasn't us. We didn't do that. I bet that was Ravi or one of your boys. Or my nine-year-old son. It was years before they were born and we didn't leave any detritus at all.

23:05But tell us about Semyon Mahadevi because I'm fascinated by her. She enters the Chola family as one of the lower-ranking daughters-in-law. These are families where the men had many wives. These wives tended to come from well-educated, moneyed backgrounds. So they weren't just sitting around in the palaces waiting for the kings to come to the harem. As the stereotype goes, these are intelligent, educated women who are talking to each other, exchanging ideas about architecture, and wealthy enough, as I said, to import tons of stone to rebuild temples. And they pick their temples carefully, strategically.

23:41So would they sit with an architect and say, look, I've paid for the stone. This is where I want it. This is what I want it to look like. Sounds like a need to redo your kitchen. Yeah, well, indeed. Is that how it would happen? This is my vision. Make it happen. Something very similar to that. We know that the more important families had their own guilds of sculptors, and they would have a template of what they would do for a particular family. But they knew how to throw in bells and whistles to embellish it, depending on the patron's personality. Which is why the Chola architecture has this really beautiful kind of intricacy about it.

24:13They're festooned with carvings from scripture. And rather charmingly, Anirudh, in your book, you say that the first known inscription about our heroine, Sembhya Mahadevi, is when she donates a modest 90 sheep to the local temple. Is that the first? Yeah, well, and you've got to think about it in terms of what was happening with the other daughters-in-law. These are ladies who are coming in with attendants carrying chests of treasure, the architects snapping to their every command, and this princess who comes in from the hills surrounding Chola territory, she's the daughter of a hill chief, she tells us, all she's got to give are sheep.

24:49Her retinue, you can imagine, was loud and noisy and had a ton of animals compared to the aristocratic ladies. 90 sheep, they're not quiet. For that sake, she doesn't approach by stealth. What I'm really interested in is we don't know very much about her apart from this story about the 90s sheep, and that she's very well off and she's very strong-minded. And yet hers is the figure that we perhaps know best of all, partly because of a controversy over this three and a half foot statue, because there was a lot of, let's put it this way. I have spent hours in front of it. It's one of the most beautiful statues.

25:19So there was a lot of controversy about how it ended up in the Freer collection and in New York, and who had it and had it been stolen and did it go missing in 1929. There's a whole sort of legal sort of tangle going on about it, if you want to have a look. google it my learned friends don't bother me i just googled so but um this statue is the one that you fell in love with three and a half feet tall describe what it looks so what's immediately apparent if you if you've looked at a few chola bronzes is that there's very clear ideal of what a you know a chola bronze maker wanted a davy a goddess to look like and and they have this very particular perfect figure and and frankly enormous breasts well is it curving she's got beautiful rounded hips i would say she's well what i'm saying is that this figure is not that ideal it's a very particular portrait sculpture of someone that actually looks like a real person rather than a rather than an idealized man's idea of what a woman should look like and she's dignified regally poised she's elegant she's very clearly resting her weight on her left foot and she's got her right leg slightly bent.