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In order to expand their influence in the other side of the Indian Ocean, the Andaman and Nicobar islands became the Chola forward base to supply invasion forces eastward.
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Utilizing their Andamani holdings, the Chola utilize suppression raids to cripple trade within Srivijaya, manipulating their lords to pledge themself towards faraway rulers. Thus, the region transformed into a Chola dominion with measures of self-governance.
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An alliance of convenience between the Chola Empire and Haripunjaya Dynasty leads to the combined invasion of the Khmer. Despite fierce resistance, their northern territory is annexed by the latter, and their coasts are conquered by the former. The center descends into chaos.
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The Ly Viet was quick to grow their influence, conquering the competing rump states left behind after the fall of the Khmer and vassalizing the Champas Kingdom. Their strength rapidly grew, growing from their geographical confinement in the South China Sea. As the Song attempted encroachment from the north, despite the Viet's overstretched forces, they were fended off — in no small part as a result of Cholan support for the Viet, seeking a buffer state between their empires.
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East and South met in the dominion capital of Palembang. The Chola, Haripunjaya, Tuyon Viet, Song China, Goryeo Korea, and Heian Japan found trade extensive and lucrative in the dominion of Srivijaya, as the world found peace across Asia.
Critical secreted technologies, like silk and tea, were both exported to other states, their monopolies along the Silk Road broken. -
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Kulothunga Chola's attempt to assassinate his father failed, leading to a momentary civil war in Chola lands back in the Ilam. After no more than a year, the ascendant to the throne was roughly put down, leading to a move towards elected coronation rather than primogeniture.
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Eager to prove his worth as the youngest recorded Chola monarch, Indana entered a halfhearted war against the small Kalingas to the north.
Incompetence ground his army to a halt, but his successor transitioned the stopgap into the starting block for conquest along the coast. -
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Headed by the strategic mastermind that was Kulothunga Chola II, the Cholan military strode out of their conflict with the Kalingas to quickly conquer the eastern Ganga, and Senas, and capture the coast of the Palas — all were merged into Vaṭakku dominion. They revealed their torpedoes in 1083 against an Arakan-Pegu alliance: the same impulse delivery system propelled by floating platforms lit with oil alighting multi-chambered black powder. Both quickly fell.
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After the spread of gunpowder technology throughout Southeast Asia, Ni Wayan Balik Suardika invented an early version of the torpedo. In a similar design to the spar torpedo, the weapon was fired towards enemy ships, using the impact to spark impulse ignition and subsequent explosion.
The Chola found her and brought her back to Madurai for further development. -
For this period of prosperity, the Chola Empire controlled the coast of the entirety of the Bay of Bengal, with a stranglehold on trade passing into China and beyond.
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The Chola established their own central church managed over the King, with a central site worshipping at the Meenakshi Temple. Cholan international traders were required to transport proselytizing missionaries, who further expanded its reach, while the various Cholan dominions along the coast were required to adopt it as their state religion.
A Shaivite monolatrist variant of Hinduism, the religion adopted current beliefs and incorporated a strong respect for military authority — the Cholas. -
With increased Song activity on the border, the Ly dynasty officially converted to align with the Cholans, seeking protection against their northern neighbors. The conversion saw large-scale pilgrimage begin to Madurai, whose Brahmins grew in wealth and power.
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An aging Kulothunga Chola II is the theoretical head of the Uirnattu faith, though all rites and ritualizes are monopolized by the Brahmin caste. Despite his own Kshatriya descendancy, Kulothunga Chola saw fit to promote a Brahmin of a new line as his heir: Bodhisena, a prominent Shaivite scholar and author of "Porulaturam", the seminal book on governance of the era.
His sons and Kshatriya relatives rebelled against the decision, but the current Chola flexed his imperial muscle. -
After the death of Kulothunga Chola II, a council was convened to elect his successor; it consisted of dominion lords, high priests, and great Chola rulers. The late emperor's chosen, Bodhisena, was eventually selected, prompting the emperor's eldest son, Vikrama, to rebel. Governing the Vatakku, he was positioned to engage a land war without addressing the Chola navy.
The greater empire, however, simply hired Vietnamese mercenaries with Palembang's wealth, Bodhisena ascended the throne in 1124. -
The dominions of Srijayava and Kaalagam, under the Emperor's careful guidance, are placed under the direct rulership of the emperor. Their vestigial mechanisms of self-governance are removed, Kshatriyan dominion lords replaced with Brahmin high governors, directly incorporated into Uirnattu authority.
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Bodhisena marries his younger sons and nephews off with members three or four people down the patrilineal line of succession of the other states. He also establishes sleeper assassins close to the rulers, enabling puppeting of the confederate states at a future date.
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The Song were forced to respond to the growing power of the small states on its border through their alignment with the Cholas by declaring war. It also hoped restore fading international prestige and internal cohesion with success on the battlefield — an idea that saw little success.
The fleet that sailed across the South China Sea was utterly annihilated by Chola torpedoes, and while Tamil marines could scare support Haripunjaya, cash inflow gridlocked chinese expansion into the state. -
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In order to better oversee her war against the Song, and to consolidate the Eastern Cholan holdings, Empress Chandradevi would administrate from the trading hub of Palembang rather than the ancestral capital of Madurai. Her son, Rajaraja Chola II, was left there in the care of Uirnattu Brahmins, practically raised in the Meenakshi temple.
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As Brahmins strengthened their hold up the eastern coast of the subcontinent and the Uirnattu-Song war continued, warrior and merchant castes began to intermarry and mix far more than previously. This began a near half-century process that culminated in the emergence of Ranvatu class, a hybrid of the Kshatriya and Vaishya castes that emerged specifically around the Straits in proximity to the Song conflict.
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Leading one of many skirmishes against the Song in order to secure territorial gains from the already-exhausted combatants, Chandradevi Chola is killed by a stray arrow. Rulership of the empire, rather disastrously, passes to her young son.
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Exhausted from constant war spurred on by Northern aggressors, the Cholan alliance managed to prompt the provisional rulers of the Guangxi province to secede from the greater empire and convert to Uirnattu.
The Song have little choice but to accept this, though they would attempt to restrict exports down the Pacific coast to impact the Cholan revenue stream. (Spoiler alert: this doesn't work.) -
The Pandyan Kingdom, which OTL was a consistent thorn in the Tamilan side of the Chola Empire, sought to undermine the religious and ethnic minorities to the south of Madurai. The seeds for a later crisis were quietly sewn.
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Emperor Kulothunga Chola III orders an exploratory expedition through Indonesia and into the lands beyond. Accompanied by diplomat and aboriginal translator, they established official contact with the Kediri and various Malayan tribes, all the way down to Papua New Guinea and the north of Australia.
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An alliance of Pandyan peasants and Tamilan Kshatriyas revolted near the heartlands of Chola Nadu, intentionally away from the coast, against Brahmin rule. They sought greater representation in the elective council that chose their king and that supported his governance, which had further and further excluded their nobility as Bodhisena's lineage propagated.
Unlike Vikrama's civil war, however, this revolt had the wealth to oppose the empire, successfully founding a breakaway state. -
The four years between the death of Kaliswaran Chola and the ascension of the bloodline of Uirnattu Chola to the imperial throne is known as the Cholan time of troubles, one of the most complicated political periods in history of the empire. A half-decade period of constant backstabbing eventually developing into assassination, compounded by a series of Emperors simply not up to the task of rule during Piraccanai Naarou.
Only the power of Uirnattu Kovil was able to prevent total collapse. -
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After the death of Rajendra Chola V, the Uirnattu priesthood began to take a more active role in the succession process. They abolished the electoral absolute monarchy that had been the paradigm since the first Civil War in 1061. The empire returned to primogeniture, one high priest christened "Uirnattu", representing the faith as a whole, and ascending to emperor. This rather snubbed the many children of old Kaliswaran, who were forced to Palembang to regroup and put up a united front.
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The Pandyan breakaway state, run from the city of Tenkasi, had previously made up the southern tip of the empire, with some land bordering the Arabian Sea. Palembang's wealth afforded a mercenary army who marched through the Pandyan lands, looting and pillaging all in their path. It's estimated that, over the course of the campaign, nearly quarter of a million people died. A majority of deaths were civilian following armed resistance — the rape, looting, and pillaging took many, many, lives.
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By 1216, under the reign of Uirnatturaja, the Chola Empire was practically divided into two separate states. Out of Palembang survived the rigidity of the caste system, merchant Vaishyas and warrior nobility Kshatriyas balancing the economic power that the Strait of Malacca provided them. In the other court, the Ilam was dominated by Uirnattu Kovil based out of Madurai, the centre of power transferring from palatial estates to a greater, grander, Meenakshi Temple. From here, theocracy ruled.
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Throughout the history of the empire, it was able to weather many a crisis as a result of Malaccan wealth. Whenever it faced a crisis as a Cholan whole that it could not face with religion, diplomacy, or military might — they bought their way out of the problem.
That would no longer be the case. Palembang divestment from the Cholan treasury was an immediate and pressing issue for Uirnattu, and laid the foundation for the Third Civil War. -
After four years, Madurai and Palembang threw away all pretense of shared prospect. Beginning with an attempted bombardment of the Andaman naval base by Uirnattu's navy, an enormous war, the likes of which hadn't been seen since initial Cholan conquests in the 1070s and 80s, war quickly consumed the empire, wealth butting heads with faith.
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A year into the civil war, Palembang was seeing little success combatting the Cholan navy. Their sailors were experienced and zealous, and qualms over fighting their countrymen dissipated with an ocean of intervening distance. The Malaccans, adapting to the situation, instead committed to the proxy war.
The Second Pandyan Revolution was one of many small revolts that they financed across Uirnattu land, and the most successful. A savage blow to the security of the Ilam. -
The old stopgap of Indana, the Kalingas, persevered under a century of occupation. They rose later, with Palembang-financed revolts originally focused on the Ilam, but found significant success with the many diverted foci of the Cholan navy. While still bordering the coast, Uirnattu had far too few marines to address them properly; combined with a fierce spirit akin to early nationalism, the Kalingas carved out their own state on the formerly Cholan coast.
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As above, so below. A Uirnattu fleet approached the Andaman Islands, surrounding it and placing it under siege, in attempt to cripple Malaccan naval projection across the Bay. After two years of brutal bombardment and pitched attempts to breach the walls, countered by Malaccan attempts to break the siege, the walls fell, but the Uirnattu navy was so sapped that their final attack was repelled with Chinese fire-eruptors kept in careful reserve.
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Uirnatturaja is dead. His eldest son, Sivaraj, takes the throne.
The war is over; Uirnattu can no longer afford to keep their navy afloat. With its end, the sea is no longer Chola — aandai kadal namlakuu poochuu.