Place · Chola-raided port town · Thailand
Talaittakkolam (Takuapa)
The 11th-century place-name 'Talaittakkolam' named in Rajendra Chola I's 1025 CE Tanjore inscription as one of the Southeast Asian cities taken in his naval raid. Modern identification generally associates it with Takuapa on the Isthmus of Kra of southern Thailand, where a Chola-period Tamil inscription was found in 1902 at the Pre-Khmer settlement attesting South Indian merchant presence — one of the few Chola-era inscriptions found outside the subcontinent. Takuapa was a trans-isthmian port that allowed trade to bypass the Malacca Strait by overland portage. The association with Talaittakkolam remains the best candidate but is not absolutely settled.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
- Location
- 8.850, 98.350
Widely identified with Takuapa on the Andaman coast of the Malay Peninsula, though not universally accepted.
Connections (1)
- Trade routeKedah / Kadaram
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.
On these journeys
Sources
Tanjore inscription; modern scholarship on the Chola–Srivijaya expedition
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