Latest / The Chola Empire: How South India Dominated the Indian Ocean — Fexingo History / The Chola-Arabs Kollam Copper Plates and the Syrian Christians
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Chola heartland — the Kaveri delta, Thanjavur, the temple economy. But the Chola era wasn't just about them. Today I want to take us to the southwestern coast of India, to Kerala, which was never really under direct Chola rule, but was deeply woven into the same Indian Ocean trade networks. Luna: Oh, interesting — Kerala, the spice coast. Lucas: Exactly. And there's this incredible set of documents from the mid-9th century — before the Chola empire really hit its stride — that gives us a snapshot of the religious and commercial diversity of that coast. I'm talking about the Kollam copper plates, also known as the Tarissapally copper plates. Luna: Copper plates again — like the Leyden plates we talked about earlier. Lucas: Right, same medium, different story. The Kollam plates date to 849 CE, and they record a grant of privileges to a community of Syrian Christian merchants in the port city of Kollam, which the Arabs called Quilon. The grant was made by a local ruler named Ayyanadikal, who was the king of Venad, a small kingdom in what's now southern Kerala. Lucas: Now, what's fascinating is that these are the oldest surviving record of any Christian community in India. And they're written in three scripts: Vatteluttu, the old Malayalam script; Grantha, which was used for Sanskrit; and Arabic, or rather early Kufic script. So already you see the multicultural nature of this port. Luna: Wait — Arabic? In 849? That's only about 150 years after the rise of Islam. Lucas: Exactly. Arab traders were already well established on the Malabar coast by then. The plates mention that the grant was made to a man called Mar Sabor, a Syrian Christian bishop, and his congregation. Mar Sabor is said to have arrived from Persia, from the Nestorian church — the Church of the East — which had a strong presence in Sassanian Iran and later under the Abbasids. Lucas: And the grant itself is remarkably detailed. Ayyanadikal exempted the church and its people from various taxes, gave them the right to use certain weights and measures, and most importantly, granted them a monopoly over the trade in certain goods. This is a merchant church, not just a religious institution. Luna: So it's like a trade charter for a Christian merchant guild. Lucas: Exactly that. The Syrian Christians in Kerala were deeply involved in the spice trade — pepper, cardamom, ginger — which was in huge demand in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. They had networks that stretched back to the Roman era, and possibly even earlier. The local tradition holds that Saint Thomas the Apostle arrived in Kerala in 52 CE and converted a number of Brahmin families. Historians debate that, but whatever the origins, by the 9th century, the Syrian Christian community was both ancient and powerful. Luna: And they got these privileges from a Hindu king. That's pretty remarkable. Lucas: It is. Ayyanadikal was a Hindu ruler, probably a devotee of Vishnu, yet here he is granting extensive rights to a Christian church. And this wasn't unusual. The Indian Ocean trading world was remarkably pluralistic. In the same port of Kollam, you had Jewish merchants, Muslim Arabs, Hindus, Jains, and Christians all living side by side. There's actually a Jewish copper plate grant from around the same period in Kochi, granting privileges to the Jewish community. Luna: So the Chola empire — was it involved in this at all? We've talked about Chola trade with China and Southeast Asia, but what about the west coast? Lucas: Good question. The Chola empire's core was the east coast, the Coromandel. But they definitely had interests on the west coast too. In the late 10th and 11th centuries, under Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, the Cholas launched campaigns into Kerala and the Chera kingdom. Rajaraja I claims to have conquered the region of Kollam itself — though that might be more about symbolic overlordship than direct rule. Lucas: What's interesting is that the Kollam copper plates predate the Chola heyday. They're from 849, during the time of the Chera Perumal kingdom, which was a contemporary of the early Cholas. The Venad king Ayyanadikal was a vassal of the Chera emperor. So this document belongs to a different political world than the Chola heartland, but it's part of the same Indian Ocean story. Luna: What happened to the Syrian Christian community later, under the Cholas? Lucas: They seem to have continued to thrive. The Cholas were generally tolerant of different religions. We know from a later inscription from the 13th century that a Syrian Christian church at Kollam — the Tarissapally itself — still held its privileges. And there's evidence that Syrian Christian merchants were active in the Chola port of Nagapattinam, where they built a church. The Chola king Rajaraja I actually granted land to a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam built by the Srivijayan king, so there was a pattern of patronage across faiths. Lucas: But the real power of the Kollam plates is what they tell us about the scale of early medieval trade. The plates list a whole set of merchant guilds — the Manigramam, the Anju-vannam, and others. These were self-governing trading corporations that operated across South India and Southeast Asia. The Anju-vannam, by the way, literally means 'the five castes' — it was a guild of Christian and Muslim merchants. Luna: So these guilds were multi-religious. Lucas: Yes. And they had their own laws, their own militias, even their own courts. They were essentially autonomous commercial republics within the ports. The Kollam plates grant the Tarissapally church membership in the Anju-vannam guild, which gave them access to all the privileges of that guild — the right to use certain weights, to travel freely, to be exempt from search by customs officials. Lucas: This is the kind of detail that brings the Indian Ocean world to life. It wasn't just about monarchs and navies. It was about networks of merchants and communities who built trust across religious and linguistic lines. The Kollam plates are a contract of trust between a Hindu king and a Christian community, written in multiple languages, witnessed by Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. Luna: And it's all recorded on copper, so it's survived to today. Lucas: Exactly. The plates are still preserved in Kollam, in the Syrian Christian church. They're a tangible link to a world that was far more connected and cosmopolitan than we often imagine. And they remind us that the Chola empire, for all its power, was just one piece of a much larger puzzle — a puzzle that included the Chera kingdom, the Syrian Christians, the Arab traders, and the Jewish merchants of Kochi. Luna: So it's a different angle on the same Indian Ocean story we've been exploring. Lucas: Exactly. The Chola empire dominates the narrative because of its military power and monumental architecture. But the real engine of the Indian Ocean was these port cities and their merchant communities. Kollam, Quilon, was one of the great nodes of that network, and the copper plates let us hear the voices of the people who made it work. Lucas: And there's still so much we don't know. For example, the identity of Mar Sabor himself is debated. Some traditions say he was a Persian bishop named Mar Sabor and his companion Mar Proth. Others think they were actually two different bishops. The plates don't give us much biographical detail. But what they do give us is a snapshot of a moment in time — a moment when a king decided to formalize his relationship with a community of foreign merchants, and in doing so, created a document that would outlast his kingdom by over a thousand years. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks for listening. Next time we'll look at the Chola influence on Southeast Asian art, specifically the bronze Buddha statues of Thailand and Indonesia that show clear Chola influence.