Karikala Chola

At its peak, the Chola Empire controlled not only southern India and Sri Lanka, but also the Maldives, with influence reaching much of south east Asia including today’s Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia and had diplomatic and trading relationships with China.

Lets start with the earliest Chola king of 2nd century :

Karikala Chola the greatest among the early Chola kings of the Sangam age in South India, ruled around 120 C.E. Karikala led the Chola empire successfully in campaigns to unify the three South kingdoms. His name meant “the man with the charred leg,” an injury he received during a fight to escape capture from a scheming competitor for his throne. He had earned praise for the beauty of his war chariots. In the Battle of Venni, Karikala crushed the Pandya and Chera forces, leading to the unifying of the three kingdoms into one under Karikala’s rule.

Karikala Chola garnered great wealth in trade with the Roman empire. He used that wealth to fund his military campaigns and to build his cities. He is reputed to have decorated the capital city of Kanchipuram with gold. He earned lasting fame by building dikes along the banks of Kaveri. He built the Kallanai (also known as the Grand Anicut) the oldest water irrigation in the world, and canals as well as tanks. Later Chola kings attributed the building of more dikes along the banks of the Kaveri to Karikala as he pioneered it before. This 330 meters long and 30 meters wide Dam, is a great engineering marvel of ancient India which is still in use today.Karikala Cholan Manimandapam (memorial hall) was built in honour of the king who built the Grand Anicut. The hall designed as per Chola architecture style was built at a cost of ₹ 21 million. It features a bronze statue of the king.

(In the Pic: I’m standing before the statue of Karikala Chola sitting on his elephant. Truly I felt the pride of a soldier and a King for a moment. This statue is erected at the Kallanai dam premise in Thanjavur dt, Tamil Nadu)