Reading the Cholas Right

S Vijay Kumar published a review of my book, Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire, in Open (‘Trivialising the Sacred’) on May 12, 2025. Unfortunately for readers, by Kumar’s own admission he didn’t fully read the book.  He stopped after reading the Introduction and the first of six chapters—an approach that, while time-efficient, does raise questions about the standards of the critique. Naturally, the result is a review rich in conviction and adjectives, but much less so in accuracy.

Kumar feels my book “trivialises, distorts, and diminishes” the Cholas. I would hardly have spent the better part of four years immersed in primary sources, secondary scholarship, and extensive field research if I were not utterly and completely awed by the Cholas, and how they are remembered today. I would like to address each of Kumar’s claims individually and the purpose of this rebuttal is to set the record straight. But it also shows how a romantic view of medieval history ultimately distorts the very past it claims to respect. In the process of examining Kumar’s piece, we can develop a richer, more complex understanding of an important part of India’s past.

Let us begin by examining how medieval kings came to power. The first issue Kumar highlights is my “accusation” that Parantaka I, an important early Chola king, committed fratricide. In the book I state that he “killed his half-brother”, prince Kannara-Deva. Kumar asserts that this cannot be the case, since Chola inscriptions do not mention a fratricidal war. But Chola inscriptions are eulogistic in tone, and focused primarily on temple donations. Something like this is unlikely to be mentioned there at all. Since the beginning of Chola studies in the early 20^th century, historians have had to “read between the lines” of inscriptions to understand court rivalries and politics: a good example is the assumed involvement of a slightly later Chola king, Uttama, in the assassination of the former heir-apparent, Aditya Karikalan.

Kumar cites art historian Padma Kaimal’s work as proof that prince Kannara-Deva was alive during Parantaka’s reign. According to Kumar, Kaimal claims that Parantaka’s daughter was married to his half-brother Kannara-Deva—implying there could, therefore, have been no fraternal strife. However, marriage between an uncle and a fraternal niece would be considered inappropriate in Tamil culture both medieval and modern. Indeed, on double-checking Kaimal’s paper, she actually says that prince Kannara-Deva was married to a princess of the allied Irukkuvel house. In his haste to refute fratricide, Kumar has ended up misquoting a scholar.

 

Disputed, murky successions were not a rarity in medieval India: if we were to look at Parantaka’s contemporaries in the Deccan, we see similar issues in the imperial Rashtrakuta dynasty, with king Govinda IV assassinating and succeeding his brother Amoghavarsha II. In our quest for historical heroes, there is no need to resort to mental gymnastics to idolise our favourite dynasties. In my view, a succession war, and Kannara-Deva’s death in such a circumstance, is the most straightforward reading of the evidence, and the simplest explanation for why he vanishes from the historical record.

Next, we come to the question of medieval devotion. In 10^th-century Tamil Nadu, a substantial class of temple donors referred to themselves as Tirukarrali Picchan, crowd-funding the reconstruction of older brick-and-timber temples in stone. Lords of Earth and Sea describes their important contributions to the development of Tamil devotional culture. In conjunction with the Chola court, these individuals funded a massive change in the architectural record, renovating older brick and timber temples for Shiva in stone. I quote from the book: “A charming title that appears… is ‘Tirukarrali Picchan’, which roughly translates to ‘Mr Crazy About Holy Stone Temples’”. I then trace out the geographic spread of inscriptions based on this title, based on the work of the distinguished scholar Vidya Dehejia.

Kumar takes umbrage at this. He says it is disrespectful to call a devotee crazy. Here I must confess that I am baffled. A plain reading of the line will show that disrespect is neither intended nor implied, and a cultural reading shows us that there is a deep, proud Indian history of crazed devotion. While the Tamil bhakti poets do, indeed, display humility and devotion to Shiva, qualities Kumar seems more comfortable with, their devotion can also be irreverent, romantic, intoxicated. Indeed, in the greatest of Tamil Shaivite texts, the Periya Puranam, Shaivite saints are depicted burning themselves, offering family members to Shiva, and even committing acts of spectacular violence in Shiva’s name. This is not always meant to be taken literally; the broader point is that crazed devotion was not an exception, but seen as a normal and regular practice. To say someone was “crazy” with devotion is not a slur. Leaving this aside, the fact is that “Picchan” can be translated to English in many ways. Indeed, Dehejia (whom Kumar cites elsewhere) has translated “Picchan” as “Fanatic”. Would this have been a better word to use?

Kumar then goes on to accuse my book of misrepresenting the nature of temple gifting practices. Tamil devotional culture, he insists, “emphasises humility and devotion over vanity”; perhaps Kumar is unaware of how royal eulogies, which preface all Chola temple gifts, begin with lists of martial conquests. I argue that, while devotion must have been an important factor, temple patrons could not have been unaware of how their contemporaries would perceive them and think of them as a result of such conspicuous donative activities.

An inscription of Rajaraja I from the Brihadishvara/Rajarajeshvaram temple at Thanjavur, from South Indian Inscriptions, vol. 2

An inscription of Rajendra I, famous successor of Rajaraja I, from the Brihadishvara/Rajarajeshvaram temple at Thanjavur, from South Indian Inscriptions, vol. 2

As is evident from the two inscriptions of Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, the first good chunk of real estate is devoted to the king’s military prowess, and his close relationship with the goddesses Fortune (Sri) and Earth (Prithvi). The inscription lists regions conquered by the king and his army, and only then mentions his gifts to the god; the emphasis is on martial prowess and generosity, rather than humility. Even a cursory reading of Chola inscriptions will reveal that this is the norm, not the exception. As such, by insisting that Chola kings were solely humble devotees, Kumar not only misunderstands the eternally intertwined nature of religion and politics, but also ignores the substance of Chola inscriptions.

Next, Kumar claims that I “assert” that Sembiyan Mahadevi commissioned 3,000 Nataraja bronzes. Once again, I find myself wishing that Kumar had read the book more carefully. Here’s the actual line from the book, page 51: “Over the course of the medieval period, practically every major Tamil temple would commission Nataraja bronzes, totalling over 3,000.” (Emphasis added.) I am referring to a period of over 300 years, and hundreds of varied patrons; Kumar has somehow understood this as my saying a single Chola queen was responsible. Kumar also takes issue with my referring to this queen as “Mahadevi” rather than “Ma Devi”; yet the grandfather of Chola studies, KA Nilakanta Sastri, whom Kumar says he admires, also uses “Mahadevi”. In a similar vein, Kumar spends much ink “refuting” my portrayal of Chola temples as “coercive political tools”, insisting that land gifts to temples were “consensual, legally ratified by village assemblies”. This is exactly how I describe land gifts on the very next page, page 52.

The question of royal coercion versus local agency is, however, an interesting one. Generations of historians of South India, such as Noboru Karashima, James Heitzman, and Y Subbarayulu, have made the case that the relationship between rulers and ruled was not simple and straightforward. Village assemblies did not always accede happily to royal interventions. However, Kumar insists that these assemblies were “firmly under royal oversight”, citing the case of the Brahmin assembly of Uttaramerur, not far from Kanchipuram. The inscriptions of Uttaramerur suggest the opposite: the assembly had its own institutions and traditions, and while many of their inscriptions pay homage to the Chola court, the majority are focused on decisions taken by the assembly without the involvement of any royal officers. Moreover, a single upper-caste assembly does not prove Kumar’s case. As I explain in great detail in Chapters 4 and 5, citing generations of scholars, there are plenty of cases where village collectives took their own decisions on taxation, with little mention of any royal involvement.

The most interesting example of this, the “Chittirameli-Periyanadu” assembly, included delegates from a huge chunk of the Chola kingdom, making it much more representative than Uttaramerur. In 1062 CE, this assembly decided to fix their tax rates on their own initiative. No Chola officers are mentioned as participating. Where is the “firm royal oversight”?

Royal control cannot be taken for granted in medieval India: as the great Chola historian Y Subbarayulu has shown, the Chola “bureaucracy” at its peak, at least going by inscriptions, numbered only about 100 individuals. How could 100 officers have exerted “firm oversight”, to use Kumar’s words, across a territory stretching over 1,000 kilometres from north to south, ruling over peoples speaking Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Sinhala? How could the Chola court have exerted control over all aspects of irrigation, local politics, devotion, and war? It was inevitable that there would have been significant autonomy for local assemblies, and that this autonomy would, at times, be at odds with royal power. Indeed, royal attempts to variously charm, impress or coerce village assemblies imparted remarkable dynamism to Tamil history and offers much to admire.

Another issue that Kumar spotlights is my argument that the Cholas did not have a navy, and that they relied on merchant shipping for their overseas exploits. Kumar points out that the role of navies was logistical, and that no ship-to-ship battles were fought; in Chapter 3 of the book, which Kumar has not read, this is exactly the point that I make. By Kumar’s own admission, there are no inscriptions mentioning Chola naval regiments. Elsewhere in his rebuttals, he insists that Chola inscriptions be read literally, rather than through interpretation. When it comes to the navy, however, he insists on reading between the lines of vague royal claims of overseas conquests, claiming these are definitive proof of a standing navy. He also claims that some Chola inscriptions mention artisans who built ships at the port of Nagapattinam.

I would be most obliged if Kumar would cite these inscriptions directly, as it appears that scholars over the last few decades have entirely missed their existence; see, for example, Y Subbarayalu’s paper, ‘A Note on the Navy of the Chola State’, in the edited volume Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa. Subbarayalu similarly points out the strange absence of inscriptions detailing a Chola navy. Personally, I would be delighted to see stronger evidence of a royally controlled regular Chola navy, as it would completely upend everything we know about land-based states, revenue structures, and military organisation in the medieval world. While Chola kings may occasionally have commissioned ships, I remain convinced that the evidence supports a more minimal, if equally interesting, conclusion: to mount their exceptional naval expeditions, the Cholas must have collaborated in some form with merchant assemblies. The nature of this collaboration is, however, unclear—as the book is at pains to explain, in chapters which Kumar is yet to read.

Finally, we come to Kumar’s declaration that my depiction of the goddess Nishumbhasudhani (a single line on page 4) is “vulgar and baseless”; according to him, she is always depicted seated on a lion, not crushing demons between her thighs, as I mention. Here is a statue of Durga/Nishumbhasudhani from near the Chola capital, Gangaikondacholapuram. The great goddess is not seated on a lion, as Kumar declares. Instead, she is trampling two demons, one leg assuredly splayed across their corpses, piled in front of her lion throne. Here, finally, I stand corrected; she is pinning a demon down under one thigh, not between both. Yet, Kumar’s sanitised description of her, that she is always seated “wielding weapons atop a lion”, is self-evidently incorrect, to say nothing of his claim that my description is  “vulgar”. Nowhere in Indian art or literature is there anything vulgar about the goddess’ thighs; all parts of her body were thought of as divine and used by artists to express her godly prowess.

A recurring theme in Kumar’s opinion piece is that there is only one possible reading of Chola history: of devotion, of idealised family relationships. In order to portray the book as “denigrating” the Cholas, he has misquoted, misread, or ignored my arguments and those of other scholars. All the evidence tells us that the medieval world was a vast and complex place: by insisting on singular, comforting, flat narratives, we misunderstand the nature of history and ignore the many peoples—politicians, devotees, merchants, cultivators—that have given and continue to give Indian history its unique flavour. It is only in allowing the past to challenge us that we begin to understand the legacy our ancestors have bequeathed us.

CholasLords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola EmpireSouth Indian history