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The Cholas were an ancient dynasty and are even mentioned in the Ashokan inscriptions. In the ninth to the eleventh century CE, they created an empire that covered most of peninsular India and briefly extended to the banks of the Ganga. The empire even included Sri Lanka and the Maldives! They had very good relations with kingdoms of South East Asia. Inscriptions on both sides show that there were large merchant communities and that the kings exchanged emissaries and gifts often.

But a problem probably arose because the Cholas began to create direct trade links with the Song empire in China. Records show that the Cholas and the Chinese exchanged a number of trade delegations in the early eleventh century. Even before this, there was trade between India and China. A large Indian merchant community had been established in Guangzhou and there were even three Hindu temples functioning there. But there appears to have been a big boom in trade once the Song empire and the Cholas had established direct links.

The Srivijaya kings who functioned as middlemen did not like this. They started to tighten controls and imposed heavy taxes on ships passing through the Straits of Malacca. An Arab text tells us that the Srivijaya kings demanded a levy of 20,000 dinars to allow a Jewish-owned ship to continue to China! This was a serious matter and the Cholas were not amused. They conducted a naval raid against Srivijaya in 1017 CE and then a more substantial expedition in 1025. This was a rare example of Indian military aggression outside the subcontinent. It did not last long. However, a few decades later, the Cholas and the Srivijayas sent joint embassies to the Chinese.

Just as India exerted its influence on South East Asia, there were many influences from the South East that came to the subcontinent. For example, the University of Nalanda grew the way it did because of the strong financial support it received from the Srivijaya kings. South East Asian kingdoms like Angkor, Majapahit and Champa accepted Indian influences and built on them, innovating and adapting them to their own culture. Moreover, the Indonesians independently conducted their own maritime expeditions. From the third to the sixth century CE, they crossed the Indian Ocean and settled in Madagascar in large numbers. The first inhabitants of Madagascar thus came from distant Indonesia and not nearby Africa! The descendants of those Indonesian settlers still form a significant part of the population in Madagascar and the Malay language contains strong influences of dialects from Borneo.

Excerpted from Page 108-110 of ‘The Incredible History of the Geography of India by Saneev Sanyal