Place · port kingdom · Malaysia

Kedah / Kadaram

Date

1025 CE

Function

Trade & production

Confidence

Qualified / contested — Kadaram is commonly identified with the Kedah region, but the inscription’s exact political geography remains debated.

Location

5.430, 100.390 (approximate)

Connections (6)

• Chola overseas expansionGangaikondacholapuram

  The Tanjore inscription listing Rajendra's overseas conquests of 1025 names Kadaram — usually identified with Kedah on the Malay peninsula — first and most prominently among the places taken. Gangaikondacholapuram was built to commemorate his imperial reach in both directions, north to the Ganges and east across the Bay of Bengal, and the inscription is the principal evidence that the naval expedition happened at all.

• Chola expeditionNagapattinam

  Kadaram, usually identified with Kedah on the Malay peninsula, is the first and most prominent place named in the Tanjore inscription's account of Rajendra Chola's overseas campaign of 1025, and Nagapattinam at the Kaveri mouth is where the fleet sailed from. The expedition is the only large Indian naval operation against a Southeast Asian power in the record, and the inscription is essentially the only evidence for it.

• TransmissionAngkor Wat, Cambodia

  Sanskrit, Indic kingship and both Hindu and Buddhist practice reached Southeast Asia by sea over roughly a thousand years, and were adopted without conquest: Kedah, Tambralinga, Srivijaya and Angkor took Sanskrit titles, Indic law and temple forms and made them local. Angkor Wat is a Vishnu temple built by a Khmer king with no Indian ruler anywhere in the story, which is what makes the whole process unlike a colonisation.

• Trade routeTalaittakkolam (Takuapa)

  Takuapa on the western shore of the isthmus and Kedah on the eastern were the two ends of the trans-peninsular portage, by which cargo crossed the Malay peninsula on foot and by river rather than running the Malacca strait and paying whoever controlled it. Tamil inscriptions and a Vishnu image have been found at Takuapa, which is why it is one of the more secure identifications in the Tanjore list, and the crossing is the reason both places mattered.

• Trade routePalembang / Srivijaya

  Kedah and Palembang are the two halves of the Srivijayan system: a peninsula port controlling the isthmus portage and a river capital controlling the strait. Yijing passed through both in the 670s as a monk buying passage; Rajendra Chola's fleet attacked both in 1025, and the Tanjore inscription names them in the same order a sailor would meet them.

• Trade routeSuvarṇabhūmi (the Golden Land)

  Kadaram, the Kedah of the Malay peninsula, is one of the places Suvarṇabhūmi has been identified with, and the one with the best claim in Tamil sources: the Cholas raided it in 1025 and the Tamil inscriptions at Takuapa show the trade was older than the raid. If the golden land had an address, the isthmus crossing at Kedah and Takuapa is the strongest candidate for it.

On these journeys

• Chola expeditions overseas — Lanka, the Maldives and Srivijaya
• India and Southeast Asia — scripts, Sanskrit and sacred kingship
• Yijing — the sea road to Nālandā (671–695)
• The Indian Ocean World — the whole rim
• Texts that travel — translation and adaptation

Sources

Tanjore inscription; ISEAS, Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa

• Wikipedia