Vijayanagara Absorption of the Chola Heartland

The Chola Empire: How South India Dominated the Indian Ocean — Fexingo History · Jun 17, 2026 · 7m · transcript

By the late 13th century, the Chola Empire that once launched naval raids on Srivijaya and filled the Kaveri delta with towering stone temples had shrunk to a sliver of its former self. This episode explores the final decades of Chola sovereignty: the rise of the Pandya kings, the devastating Khalji invasion from the Delhi Sultanate that swept through Tamil country in 1311, and the gradual absorption of Chola territories into the emerging Vijayanagara Empire under Harihara and Bukka. We read from the Maduraivijayam, a Sanskrit poem by Gangadevi that celebrates the conquest, and examine…