Place · Chola port town · India
Nagapattinam
/naːɡapːaʈːiɳam/
Also known as Chudamani Vihara, Chudamani Vihara (Srivijayan gift), Nagapattinam, Chola naval expedition to Srivijaya, Srivijaya expedition
Nagapattinam is a coastal town in Tamil Nadu at the mouth of the Kaveri delta, historically the principal maritime port of the Chola empire. It served as the imperial outlet to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia from the 9th century onward, hosted the Srivijayan-endowed Chudamani Vihara Buddhist monastery in the 11th century, and later became the capital of Dutch Coromandel from 1660 to 1781 before passing to the British.
- Periods
- Regional Flourishing, Islamic Age and Bhakti Traditions, Early Modern Age, British Colonial Age, Republic and Living Practice
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
- Location
- 10.767, 79.843
Worth knowing
large hoard of bronze Buddha images was recovered from Nagapattinam in the 19th century, now dispersed across the Government Museum in Chennai and international collections, dating from the 8th to 13th centuries and documenting the long persistence of Buddhism at the site. The town was devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed over 6,000 people locally, making it one of India's worst-hit sites.
The precise site of the Chudamani Vihara is disputed and no substantial ruins survive above ground; identification rests on inscriptions and 19th century reports rather than upstanding remains.
Connections (13)
- CampaignGangaikondacholapuram
Rajendra's fleet for the Srivijaya campaign of 1025 sailed from the Coromandel roads around Nagapattinam, in the reign that also built Gangaikondacholapuram to commemorate the expedition to the Ganges. The two projects belong together: a new capital named for a northern march and a naval expedition across the Bay of Bengal, mounted by the same state within a few years of each other.
- Port forKaveripattinam (Puhar)
Kaveripattinam was the Sangam-age port at the Kaveri mouth and Nagapattinam the medieval Chola one a little to its south — the harbour moved as the delta silted, which is what happens to every port on this coast. Rajendra's fleets for Sri Lanka and Srivijaya sailed from these Coromandel roads, and Nagapattinam also held a Buddhist vihara endowed by a Srivijayan king, which is the other half of the same relationship.
- Campaign baseThanjavur Brihadishvara
The Kaveri delta was the Chola base — its rice surplus, its irrigation and its temple-managed land paid for everything else — and Nagapattinam was the port through which that power reached the sea. The Sri Lankan campaigns and the Srivijaya expedition were launched from this coast, and the Chudamani vihara at Nagapattinam, built with Srivijayan money under Chola licence, shows the diplomatic side of the same relationship.
- Chola expeditionKedah / Kadaram
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.
- Tanjore inscription nameMalaiyur (Jambi / Malayu, Sumatra)
Malaiyur, generally connected with Jambi or the Malayu polity of Sumatra, is one of the names in the Tanjore record of the 1025 campaign whose modern identification is not settled — which is true of several. The repository keeps these as inscriptional place-names rather than asserting a location, because the inscription is the only source and it gives names in a sequence, not coordinates.
- Tanjore inscription nameIlangasokam (Langkasuka)
Ilangasokam, usually connected with Langkasuka on the northern Malay coast, is among the places the Tanjore inscription names in Rajendra's campaign, and its identification remains debated. Langkasuka appears in Chinese, Malay and Javanese sources as a real polity across several centuries, which makes the connection plausible without making it certain.
- Tanjore inscription nameNakkavaram / Nicobar Islands
Nakkavaram is commonly identified with the Nicobar Islands, which sit directly on the sailing route from the Coromandel to the straits — the first landfall after crossing the Bay of Bengal. The inscription places it within the 1025 campaign's geography, and Marco Polo two and a half centuries later describes the same islands under a similar name. It is one of the few names in the list whose identification is generally accepted.
- Site adjacencyTranquebar (Tharangambadi)
Nagapattinam and Tranquebar are fifteen kilometres apart on the Coromandel and were neighbouring European enclaves — Dutch Nagapattinam from 1660, Danish Tranquebar from 1620. Ziegenbalg's Tamil press worked under the Danish flag at one while the Dutch ran a fortified trading town at the other, and Nagapattinam had already been the Chola empire's principal port six centuries earlier, with a Buddhist vihara endowed by a Srivijayan king.
- Site adjacencyVelankanni Basilica
Velankanni, 12 kilometres south of Nagapattinam, houses the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, one of the most visited Marian shrines in Asia. Portuguese sailors are said to have built the first chapel in the 16th century after Mary appeared to Tamil boys. It draws pilgrims across religious lines annually.
- Traveller routeLankā / Sri Lanka
Nagapattinam was an important maritime centre connecting the Tamil coast with Sri Lanka and the wider Indian Ocean. Buddhist and Hindu networks passed through the port, while merchants travelled between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan ports. The region also preserves evidence of South Indian connections with Sri Lankan Buddhist institutions and communities.
- Trade routePalembang / Srivijaya
A Srivijayan king endowed the Chudamani vihara at Nagapattinam in about 1006 with Rajaraja's licence and a grant of village revenue, recorded in the Leiden copper plates — so the Cholas were taking money from Srivijaya to build a Buddhist monastery in their own port twenty years before they attacked it. Both facts are documented and neither cancels the other, which is a reasonable description of how medieval Indian Ocean diplomacy worked.
- Site adjacencyVaitheeswaran, Nagapattinam
Vaitheeswaran Koil is a Shiva healing temple in Mayiladuthurai district a short drive inland from Nagapattinam port; the two are neighbouring Chola-region sites of coastal Tamil Nadu rather than one inside the other.
- Site withinVaitheeswaran, Nagapattinam
Vaitheeswaran Kōyil, the temple of Śiva as the divine healer Vaitheeśvarar, is in Vaitheeswarankoil village in Nagapattinam district of the Kaveri delta. Pilgrims come to the shrine for cures and to consult the nāḍī astrologers of the surrounding settlement — the only town where the palm-leaf nāḍī tradition is still a continuous commercial practice.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Chudamani Vihara”. The Tanjore (Brihadishvara) inscription of Rajendra I; Hermann Kulke et al., Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa (2009).
Open Nagapattinam in the repository →