Skip to main content
EditionEnglish edition·Édition française
What was the Chola Empire?
Seal of Magna Bureau Magna Bureau No Single Capital Owns the Whole Truth
Universal Encyclopedia

What was the Chola Empire?

From the Tamil south of India, a dynasty of kings built temples as tall as mountains, cast bronze gods that still make viewers catch their breath, and — alone among Indian empires — built a navy that projected power across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia.

The short answer

Thanjavur ★ Sri Lanka Maldives Srivijaya · 1025 Greatest extent — stylized map 848 Vijayalaya seizes Thanjavur 985 Rajaraja I — the great builder 1025 Fleet raids Srivijaya 1279 Last Chola king gone Rise · zenith · fall Brihadisvara by the numbers Temple tower 66-meter Capstone 80-tonne Brihadisvara by the numbers The rise The Cholas were an ancient Tamil lineage revived in 848, when Vijayalaya seized Thanjavur. For a century they consolidated the south, fighting the Pallavas and Pandyas for supremacy — patient, methodical empire-building, the unglamorous kind that lasts.

The full file

Encyclopedia

Read the full file

From the Tamil south of India, a dynasty of kings built temples as tall as mountains, cast bronze gods that still make viewers catch their breath, and — alone a…

Related questions

What was the Abbasid Caliphate?What was the Aksumite Empire?What was the Ashanti Empire?What was the Austro-Hungarian Empire?What was the Benin Empire?What was the British Empire?What was the Bulgarian Empire?What was Cahokia?What was the Carolingian Empire?What was Carthage?What was the Caliphate of Córdoba?What was the Dutch Empire?

More from the Bureau

All questionsFactbookRankings

Across the Bureau

The first storytellers: Aboriginal Australia — HistoryAda Lovelace: the first programmerSeeds of power: the Neolithic Revolution — HistoryAE — Country ProfileAfghanistan — Country ProfileAlbania — Country ProfileHistory of AE — TimelineHistory of Afghanistan — Timeline