Ancient & Medieval History · The Cholas: Rise & Political History
The concept being tested: Rajendra I's naval campaigns against Srivijaya.
Who among the following led a successful military campaign against the kingdom of Srivijaya, the powerful maritime State, which ruled the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java and the neighbouring islands?
Rajendra I succeeded his father Rajaraja I as Chola emperor and, around 1025 CE, launched a major overseas naval expedition against the Srivijaya empire, then ruled by Sangrama Vijayottunggavarman of the Sailendra dynasty. Srivijaya controlled the Malacca Strait and the sea lanes linking India to China, and had begun obstructing Chola trading missions. Rajendra I's fleet struck across the Bay of Bengal, sacked the Srivijayan capital at Kadaram (Kedah) on the Malay Peninsula, and captured the king along with a string of ports in Sumatra, Java and the Malay Peninsula, an expedition recorded in the Thanjavur (Tanjore) inscriptions. This remains the only major naval expedition any Indian dynasty sent into Southeast Asia, undertaken chiefly to secure the Chola maritime trade network rather than for territorial annexation, which is why Rajendra I, not any contemporary land-based ruler, is the answer.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC uses this question to test whether aspirants can distinguish the Chola dynasty's unique overseas naval reach from the essentially land-based, Deccan-and-north-facing campaigns of contemporaries like the Rashtrakutas, Kakatiyas and Hoysalas, who are included as plausible-sounding but geographically and militarily mismatched distractors.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 7 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.
Other past-year questions touching The Cholas: Rise & Political History.