Cholas: How a dynasty in India created a cultural and economic superpower

The year 1000 AD marked the height of the medieval period. Europe at this time was in flux, with the powerful nations we know today, such as Norman-ruled England and the disparate territories that would become France, yet to emerge. The towering Gothic cathedrals were also still unbuilt. Aside from distant and prosperous Constantinople, few large urban centers dominated the European continent at the time.

Yet, in that same year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from South India was preparing to build the world’s most magnificent temple. Completed in just ten years, the temple stood 66 meters (216 feet) tall, constructed from 130,000 tons of granite, making it second only to the pyramids of Egypt in height. At its heart was a 12-foot-tall statue of the Hindu god Shiva, encased in gold inlaid with rubies and pearls.

In dimly lit halls, 60 bronze sculptures were displayed, adorned with thousands of pearls collected from conquered Lanka. In the treasury, tons of gold and silver coins were stored, along with necklaces, jewels, trumpets, and drums seized from defeated kings of the southern Indian peninsula, making this emperor the wealthiest man of his time. Known as Raja Raja, meaning “King of Kings,” he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Chola dynasty.

This family changed the way the medieval world worked, yet remains largely unknown outside of India. Before the 11th century, the Cholas were just one of many squabbling powers on the floodplains of the Kaveri River, a massive silt body that flows through what is now Tamil Nadu, India. But what set the Cholas apart was their relentless capacity for innovation. By the standards of the medieval world, Chola queens were also unusually prominent, acting as the public face of the dynasty.

The Chola dowager queen, Sembiyan Mahadevi (Raja Raja’s great-aunt), traveled to Tamil villages, transforming small, old mud-brick shrines into gleaming stone structures, effectively “rebranding” the family as the most devout followers of Shiva, thereby winning popular support. Sembiyan prayed to Nataraja, the little-known dancing form of the Hindu god Shiva, and all her temples prominently featured Nataraja. This trend quickly caught on. Today, Nataraja is one of the most recognizable symbols of Hinduism. But in the minds of medieval Indians, Nataraja was effectively a symbol of the Chola dynasty.

Emperor Raja Raja Chola shared his great-aunt's penchant for public relations and religious piety, but with one notable difference. Raja Raja was also a conqueror. In the 990s AD, he led his army over the Western Ghats, destroying enemy ships docked in harbors. Next, he exploited internal turmoil in Lanka, where he established a Chola outpost, becoming the first mainland Indian king to establish a lasting foothold on the island. Finally, he pushed into the rugged Deccan Plateau, carving out a portion of it for himself.

The spoils of conquest were lavished on his magnificent imperial temple, known today as the Brihadeeswarar Temple. In addition to precious treasures, the great temple received 5,000 tons of rice annually from conquered territories across southern India (today, it would take 12 Airbus A380s to carry that much rice). This allowed the Brihadeeswarar Temple to function as a super-department of public works and welfare, a tool of the Chola state designed to channel Raja Raja’s immense wealth into new irrigation systems, expanded arable land, and vast new herds of sheep and water buffalo. Few states in the world have ever conceived of such economic control on such a scale and depth.

The Cholas were to the Indian Ocean what the Mongols were to Inner Eurasia. Raja Raja Chola’s successor, Rajendra, formed an alliance with Tamil merchant companies: a collaboration between merchants and state power that foreshadowed the East India Company by more than 700 years. In 1026, Rajendra deployed his armies on merchant ships and sacked Kedah, a Malay city that controlled the global trade in precious timber and spices.

While some Indian nationalists have declared this a Chola “conquest” or “colonization” of Southeast Asia, archaeology suggests a more complex picture: the Cholas seem not to have had a navy of their own, but under their rule, a wave of Tamil diaspora merchants spread across the Bay of Bengal. By the late 11th century, these merchants were operating independent ports in northern Sumatra. A century later, they had penetrated deep into what is now Myanmar and Thailand, and were serving as tax collectors in Java. By the 13th century, in Mongol-ruled China, Tamil merchants were running successful businesses in the port of Quanzhou and even built a Shiva temple on the Chinese east coast.

Conquest and global connections transformed South India under Chola rule into a cultural and economic powerhouse, a hub of global trade networks. Chola nobles poured the spoils of war into a new round of temple building, sourcing fine goods from a truly global economy that linked the farthest shores of Europe and Asia. The copper and tin for their bronzes came from Egypt, possibly even Spain. Camphor and sandalwood for the gods came from Sumatra and Borneo.

Tamil temples grew into vast complexes and public spaces, surrounded by markets and with rice-producing estates. In the Chola heartland on the Kaveri River, in what is now the city of Kumbakonam, a constellation of a dozen temple towns supported tens of thousands of people, likely more than most cities in Europe at the time. These Chola cities were astonishingly multicultural and multi-religious: Chinese Buddhists brushed shoulders with Tunisian Jews, and Bengali tantric masters traded with Sri Lankan Muslims. Today, Tamil Nadu is one of the most urbanized regions of India. Many of the state’s towns grew up around the shrines and markets of the Chola period.

This urban and architectural development was also reflected in art and literature. Medieval Tamil metalwork, created for Chola temples, is perhaps the finest metalwork ever produced by humans, with artists comparable to Michelangelo or Donatello in their appreciation of the human form. To glorify Chola kings and worship the gods, Tamil poets developed concepts of saints, history, and even magical realism. The Chola period was like the Renaissance happening 300 years early in South India.

It is no coincidence that Chola bronzes, especially Nataraja bronzes, can be found in the collections of most major Western museums. Scattered across the world, they are the relics of a time of brilliant political innovation, globe-spanning seafaring expeditions, magnificent temples, and astonishing wealth—the merchants, rulers, and artists who shaped the planet we inhabit today.

Anirudh Kanisetti is an Indian writer and author, whose recent work is Lords of the Earth: The History of the Chola Empire.