Chola Dynasty

The Chola dynasty was a Tamil dynasty of southern India that built an expansive maritime empire, first documented in inscriptions from the third century BC during the reign of Ashoka and rising to imperial dominance under the Medieval Cholas beginning in the mid-ninth century AD. Ruling alongside the Chera and Pandya dynasties as one of the three great Tamil kingdoms, the medieval line was founded by Vijayalaya in 848 AD, and under rulers such as Rajaraja I and Rajendra I the empire unified the peninsula south of the Tungabhadra River as a single state for three centuries between 907 and 1215 AD, becoming a dominant military, economic and cultural force across South and Southeast Asia. The dynasty gradually declined and was absorbed by the Pandyan empire, ending with the reign of its final ruler, Rajendra III, in 1279 AD.