Rajaraja Chola: Interplay Between an Imperial Regime and Productive Forces of Society

The early Cholas had lost their pre-eminence during the Kalabhra32 period between the 3rd and 6th centuries and had literally been reduced to feudatories of the more powerful Pandya and Pallava kingdoms. It is from this desperate position that we come across their first attempts to establish an empire which expanded into the largest empire that the

But, purportedly, there is a kinder way to look at this since ‘it appears, however, that the true meaning of the phrase is that the vanquished king had to acknowledge his defeat by humbling himself before the conqueror in a particular manner as it were, by placing his head at the disposal of the conqueror’.

In this entire period, very few would contest the fact that it is with the accession of Rajaraja Chola that the land of Tamils entered upon centuries of grandeur.

On the whole, the Tamil people had a penchant for different types of aggression and war which kept them happily engaged with each other,

The emperor contributed to the growth of Tamil by popularising the Devaram61, the sacred Tamil hymns of the Saivite bhakti saints.

No less important to the stability of his empire was the compelling iconography of Saivism2 and the bhakti movement3

During this period of roughly two and half centuries, the Cholas were constantly at war with their neighbours.

While his grants and gifts to temples have astounded many, it is a fact that during the reign of the Cholas, lands of the oppressed were systemically appropriated and the booty from war spoils were used to fund temple construction.

Rajaraja assembled a marauding army, no less audacious, to build the first imperial empire of the South after reducing several cities to ashes and charred bones.