HistoriCity: Nagapattinam to Netherlands, A 1000 year journey

THe Chola-era cu plates existence brought to republic of india from the holland hold historical information which goes beyond the Chola period, and the kings in whose reigns the copper plates were issued. These two sets of plates issued in the reigns of two Chola kings and separated by at least half a century reveal a forgotten aspect of the reach of Buddhism in south India. They also tell us that relations between the Buddhist Sri-Vijaya empire of Indonesia and the Shaivite-Vaishnavite Cholas were based on trade and commerce. Even though Cholas engaged in warfare with Sri Vijaya in the beginning of the 11th century, they built diplomatic relations by accommodating each other in the realm of commerce and religion.The 24 plates are all made of copper and weigh 30 kilograms, they are wound together by a ring which is sealed with the royal seal of emperor Rajendra Chola I (1012-1042 CE), and that of Kulottanga I (1070-1112 CE). The Chola consisted of lamps and fish forms and the tiger along with Sanskrit text.The Chola emblem—the tiger, along with two lamps and fish—forms are etched in the seal. The plates contain a smaller set of opening verses in Sanskrit, but the bulk of the text in these plates is inscribed in the local language, Tamil. The plates are a legal decree recording the grant of Apainmangalam village by emperor Rajendra Chola I’s father RajaRaja I in 1006 CE, for the upkeep of a Buddhist temple and monastery in Nagapattinam on the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu. The Chola king issued this grant at the request of the Sri Vijaya king Maravijayattungavarma whose father Chulamanivarman had commissioned the construction of the Buddhist complex. A female elephant accompanied by four attendants whose names are also recorded was set walking and her wanderings marked the boundary of the village.It awarded its Buddhist donees “...possession of the wet lands, dry lands, the village, village-site, ponds, sacred temples, the quarters of the Paraiyas, the quarters of the artisans and the burning grounds…”.The rights to dig and maintain water channels for irrigation as well as for drinking were also given with the caveat that this should be done in such a way that the Buddhist beneficiaries and their non-Buddhist neighbours both benefitted from these water channels.Further benefits were awarded such as a portion of each basket of grain, one kanam or coin of gold on every marriage occasion, vannãrapparai or fee on washerman’s stones, kusakbanam or fee of one kanam paid by every potter, shepherds, goldsmiths, and commissions were also charged on various kinds of tolls and taxes.This was a huge reprieve to Buddhists in India whose religion had suffered serious setbacks up north in the Ganga tract where kings no longer patronised it. A handful of chiefdoms and individual kings supported Buddhist sects in Odisha, and areas covering what is present-day Andhra Pradesh. What makes this donation even more intriguing is that less than two decades after his father made the oral commitment, in 1025 CE, Rajendra Chola I launched a successful naval campaign that plundered the Sri Vijaya capital Palembang, looted the famous royal treasure, and took prisoner, the king himself.The second set of copper plates being brought from Leiden university also belong to the Chola dynasty pertaining to the same Chulamani shrine in Nagapattinam. The Chola king who issued them was Rajakesharivarnam Kulottunga Chola I (r. 1070-1120 CE). He renewed the grant and endorsed, as well as provided exemptions of taxes to Buddhist ambassadors from the court of the king of a Sumatran kingdom known as Kadaha. This grant was issued in 1090 CE when Kulottunga had completed two decades of his rule and stabilised it after the initial years of political chaos and revolts both in the north and the south in Lanka.The two sets of plates also reveal that while Chola and Sri Vijayan kings often went to war against each other it did not permanently damage relations between the two kingdoms.From Nagapattinam to Netherlands and back: A 1,000-year JourneyColonialism in India was not the sole proprietorship of the British. The Dutch established trading posts on India’s western coastline soon after the arrival of the Portuguese and long before the English East India Company had found its feet in the subcontinent. Their operations lasted for more than two hundred years beginning with their trading post at the port of Pulicat near Nagapattinam in 1610 to 1825 when they were defeated by the British, and relinquished Dutch India’ under the Anglo-Dutch Treat of 1824.The Buddhist monastery called Chulamanivarman at Nagapattinam seemed to have fallen into disuse well before the Dutch trading company’s scouts noticed a three-storey tower- with windows and doors incised into each of the four sides. This typical style of Buddhist architecture has also been found in Sri Vijayan-era buildings and sites. The tower was part of the 1,000-year-old Buddhist monastery and outlived countless generations and dozens of dynasties till it was demolished by British-backed Jesuit missionaries in 1867. In the 17th century it served as a marker for the port town for ships sailing by that area. In fact, Nagapattinam’s importance to maritime trade is attested through different periods going back to the Mauryas in the 3rd century BCE. It was the first safe and natural harbour for ships sailing from China and going further east.Therefore, it was natural that the Dutch who had big stakes in trade in Indonesia wanted a base in India to boost their trade in spices with that in textiles, and other valuable goods, it was to further this cause that they had ousted the Portuguese from the western coast in the early 17th century. While the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) or the Dutch East India Company was running the coromandel coast first from Pulicat and then 1690 onwards from Nagapattinam it received strategic support from the Nayak rulers, who were previously regional governors (of Telugu origins) under the Vijayanagar empire.During this period, the Dutch ran a massive gunpowder factory from Pulicat till they lost out to the British. According to the Dutch government a possible theory for the discovery of the plates is that after Buddhism had been totally replaced these plates were, considered sacred, were buried in the ground. During the construction of the VOC’s fort “De vijf Sinnen”, a star-shaped fortified structure that was completed in 1690 at Nagapattinam, the plates were likely discovered and taken into possession by “Johannes van Steelandt, governor of Coromandel and a VOC official with a questionable reputation (including extortion). In 1710, Van Steelandt moved from Coromandel (which was in the area of the former Chola Empire) to Batavia, and may have taken the plates with him”.At Batavia, which was the VOC base in Indonesia, Steelandt likely met Florentius Camper who was a pastor, and the plates came into the latter’s possession as it was his descendants who gifted this invaluable inheritance to Leiden university where it has remained conserved till today.Author Valay Singh’s HistoriCity is a column about a city in the news based on its documented history, mythology, and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal.