Early Cholas

The Early Cholas were one of the three great Tamil kingdoms of southern India, ruling the fertile Kaveri delta in what is now Tamil Nadu during the Sangam age, roughly from the sixth century BCE to the third century CE. Their history is known from early Tamil poems, from the edicts of Ashoka, which name the Cholas among the kingdoms outside his dominion but friendly to him, from the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and from Ptolemy, who described their ports and inland cities. Their early capitals were Urayur, at modern Tiruchirappalli, and Kaveripattinam, the port also called Puhar at the mouth of the Kaveri. The most celebrated ruler was Karikala, credited with victory at Venni, with building irrigation works along the Kaveri and with founding Puhar as a great emporium, where the Periplus records trade with the Mediterranean world. The Cholas competed and intermarried with the Pandyas and the Cheras, and Sangam poetry describes their courts, wars and patronage of poets. After the third century the dynasty faded into obscurity until Vijayalaya founded the medieval Chola empire at Thanjavur in the ninth century.