Place · Srivijaya tributary port · Indonesia
Pannai, Sumatra
The 11th-century name Pannai, named among the places taken in Rajendra Chola I's 1025 CE naval raid across the Bay of Bengal recorded in the Tanjore inscription of the Chola emperor. Pannai is commonly located in northern Sumatra on the Barumun or Panai river, a Shrivijayan tributary port of some importance before the Chola raid broke Shrivijayan maritime hegemony. The Tanjore inscription names fifteen Southeast Asian cities Rajendra took in a single campaign — the only recorded Indian naval expedition to Southeast Asia and the one that opened the subsequent Chola-controlled 'South Indian lake' commerce across the Bay of Bengal through the 11th-12th centuries. Pannai's exact location is debated; one candidate is the Padang Lawas archaeological region.
- Date
- 1025 CE
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Qualified / contested
- Location
- 2.250, 99.780
Connections (1)
- Imperial administration ofPalembang / Srivijaya
Pannai on the Sumatran coast was one of the ports the Srivijayan system controlled, and the Tanjore inscription names it among the places Rajendra's fleet took in 1025. What the raid actually did is disputed: Srivijaya recovered and continued sending embassies to China, so the campaign reads less like a conquest than like a violent renegotiation of the terms on which Tamil merchant guilds could trade through the straits.
On these journeys
- Chola expeditions overseas — Lanka, the Maldives and Srivijaya
- India and Southeast Asia — scripts, Sanskrit and sacred kingship
- The Indian Ocean World — the whole rim
- Texts that travel — translation and adaptation
Sources
Tanjore inscription; scholarship on the Chola–Srivijaya expedition
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