Rajendra I

Rajendra I ruled the Chola empire of southern India from 1014 to 1044, the period when the Chola dynasty reached the height of its power. His armies campaigned from Sri Lanka to the Ganges, and his fleet attacked the trading kingdom of Srivijaya across the Indian Ocean, making him one of very few Indian rulers to wage war overseas. He commemorated his northern campaign with a new capital, Gangaikonda Cholapuram.

Rajendra was the son of the great Chola king Rajaraja I and Queen Vanathi; his exact birth date is unknown, but it is usually placed around 971. He served in his father's armies for years before his accession, campaigning against the Western Chalukyas of the Deccan, the Chola's chief rivals. In 1012 Rajaraja made him co-ruler, and he succeeded to the throne on his father's death in 1014. Four years later he in turn named his own son Rajadhiraja as heir and co-regent, and many later campaigns were led by him.

Early in his reign Rajendra led forces into the Chalukya heartland and sacked their capital, Manyakheta. Fighting with the Chalukyas continued for decades, notably at Maski around 1020 and over control of Vengi on the east coast, where Rajendra backed his nephew Rajaraja Narendra as ruler. He tightened Chola control over the Pandya and Chera lands of the far south, placing one of his sons as viceroy at Madurai. His navy took the Maldives and Lakshadweep islands. In Sri Lanka, which his father had partly conquered, Rajendra's forces overran the southern kingdom of Ruhuna around 1017 to 1018 and carried the Sinhalese king Mahinda V to India, where he died a prisoner in 1029. Chola rule on the island never became secure, however, and the Cholas finally withdrew around 1070.

Around 1019 to 1022, according to differing reckonings of his inscriptions, Rajendra sent an army north through Kalinga, in present-day Odisha, to the Ganges. It defeated a series of kings, among them Mahipala of the Pala kingdom of Bengal, while Rajendra himself waited further south. The army returned with water from the Ganges, poured into a vast reservoir called the Cholagangam, which his inscriptions describe as a "liquid pillar of victory". Some early scholars saw the expedition as a pilgrimage, but most historians now treat it as a military campaign. Rajendra took the title Gangaikonda Chola, "the Chola who took the Ganges".

The richest prize lay overseas. Srivijaya, centred on Palembang in Sumatra, controlled the straits through which trade passed between India and China. In the mid-1020s, probably 1025, a Chola fleet attacked its ports in Sumatra and on the Malay Peninsula, including Kadaram, now Kedah, and captured its king, Sangrama Vijayatunggavarman. Historians link the war to an alliance between Rajendra and the Khmer king Suryavarman I, and to the Cholas' interest in trade. The raid was not followed by lasting occupation, but it badly weakened Srivijaya and helped Tamil merchant guilds expand across South-East Asia.

With the wealth of these campaigns Rajendra built Gangaikonda Cholapuram, in present-day Tamil Nadu, as his new capital. It had a fortified palace, an artificial lake and the great Brihadisvara temple, modelled on his father's temple at Thanjavur, and remained the Chola capital for about 250 years. The temple survives, but most of the city's other buildings were destroyed in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Rajendra was a devotee of Shiva and is said to have composed hymns in his honour, while also supporting other temples and religious institutions.

Rajendra died in 1044 at Brahmadesam, in present-day Tamil Nadu. According to an inscription of his son Rajadhiraja I, who succeeded him, his queen Viramahadevi committed sati on his death.

Our 1000 map shows the Chola state of his father's reign, and the 1100 map shows the empire after Rajendra's conquests had established it across southern India.