Person · Chola emperor · India
Rājendra I
Rajaraja's son, who marched an army to the Ganges in the 1020s and brought back water for his new capital, and then in 1025 sent a fleet across the Bay of Bengal against Srivijaya — the only Indian overseas naval campaign of the medieval period, and one of very few anywhere.
- Date
- 990–1044
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 11.206, 79.445
Worth knowing
He took the title Gangaikonda, he who brought the Ganges, and named his capital after it. The Srivijaya expedition is known almost entirely from one inscription at Thanjavur listing the places taken; several of them cannot be identified on a map, and Srivijaya recovered and went on sending embassies to China afterwards.
About the place
Placed at Gangaikondacholapuram, the capital he founded and named for his northern march, and where his temple stands in open fields.
Connections (1)
- CampaignPrayāga / Prayagraj/ Allahabad
Rajendra marched north through Kalinga and Bengal to the Ganges in the 1020s, defeated the Pala ruler Mahipala, and had Ganges water carried back to fill a tank at his new capital — which is what the title Gangaikonda means and what the city's name commemorates. Prayaga and the Ganges plain were the source of the water and of the prestige; the campaign took no territory and was never meant to.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Rajendra I”. The Thanjavur (Brihadishvara) inscriptions in South Indian Inscriptions II; Hermann Kulke, K. Kesavapany and Vijay Sakhuja (eds), Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa (2009).
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