Background documents for the relations between the Cholas and the Malay world. The Larger plates record the Buddhist monastery built at Nagapattinam by the king of Srivijaya, Chudamanivarman and his son Maravijayottungavarman, and the villages Rajaraja I gave it; the Smaller plates of 1090 record envoys from the king of Kadaram (Kedah) asking Kulottunga I to confirm the grant. They show a Srivijaya-Malayu kingdom with footholds on both sides of the straits and a Buddhist presence on the Coromandel coast that was still there in 1200, when Chinese sources describe the same kingdom at Palembang and Jambi. They are a century and more old at 1200, and the Chola raids on Srivijaya of 1025 are known only from other inscriptions.
About this source
- Title
- The Larger and Smaller Leiden copper plates
- Author
- The Chola chancery (Rajaraja I, Rajendra I, Kulottunga I)
- Written
- the Larger plates about 1005 to 1014 (completed under Rajendra I); the Smaller plates 1090
- Language
- Sanskrit and Tamil, with English translations
- Covers
- the Chola endowment of the Chudamani vihara built at Nagapattinam by the king of Srivijaya (Kataha), and its confirmation in 1090
- Kind
- Charters and cartularies
The plates are in the Leiden University library. For Srivijaya's own inscriptions (7th century, Palembang and Bangka) see Coedes, Les inscriptions malaises de Crivijaya, BEFEO 30 (1930), on Persee, not verified here; nothing of the kind survives from 1200.