The Chera dynasty (or Cēra, IPA: [t͡ʃeːɾɐ]), also known as Keralaputra, from the early historic Tamil-speaking southern India, or the Sangam period, ruled over parts of present-day states Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The Cheras, known as one of the mu-ventar (the Three Kings) of Tamilakam (the Tamil Country) alongside the Chola and Pandya, has been documented as early as the third century BCE. The Chera country was geographically well-placed at the tip of the Indian peninsula to profit from maritime trade via the extensive Indian Ocean networks. Exchange of spices, especially black pepper, with Middle Eastern or Graeco-Roman merchants, is attested in several sources. Their influence extended over central Kerala and western Tamil Nadu until the end of the early historic period in southern India.
The Cheras of the early historical period (c. second century BCE – c. third/fifth century CE) had their centre in interior Tamil country (Vanchi-Karur, Kongu Nadu), and ports at Muchiri-Vanchi (Muziris) and Thondi (Tyndis) on the Indian Ocean coast of Kerala. They also controlled Palakkad Gap, the principal trade route between the Malabar Coast and eastern Tamil Nadu.
The early Tamil literature, known as the Sangam texts, and extensive Graeco-Roman accounts are the major sources of information about the early historic Cheras. The major pre-Pallava polities of southern India, such as the Cheras, the Pandyas and the Cholas, are sometimes described as a "kinship-based redistributive economies" that were largely shaped by "pastoral-cum-agrarian subsistence" and "predatory politics". Other sources for the Cheras include Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, one of which describes Kadunkon Ilam Kadunko, son of Perum Kadunkon, and the grandson of Ko Athan Cheral of the Irumporai clan, silver portrait coins with Brahmi legends of a number of Chera rulers, and copper coins depicting the Chera symbols the bow and the arrow on the reverse. After the end of the early historical period, around the third-to-fifth centuries CE, the Cheras' power significantly declined.
"Kadal Pirakottiya" Chenkuttuvan, the most celebrated Chera ruler of early Tamil literature, is famous for the traditions surrounding Kannaki, the principal character of the Tamil epic poem Chilappathikaram. Mediaeval ruling lineages, such as Cheras of the Kongu country and Cheras of Mahodayapuram (Kodungallur), claimed descent from the pre-Pallava Chera rulers.
The Dravidian term "Chera" or "Cherama[ka]n"/"Cheralar" and its several Indo-Aryan variants, such as the "Keralaputras", denote the ruling lineage/family or the people and the geographical region associated with the clan/people. The etymology of "Chera" is still debated among historians. In one version, the word is derived from Cheral, a corruption of Charal meaning "declivity of a mountain" in Tamil, suggesting a connection with the mountainous geography of Kerala. Another theory states the word "Cheralam" is derived from "cher" (sand) and "alam" (region), meaning, "the slushy land". A number of other theories appear in historical studies.
In ancient non-Tamil sources, the Cheras are referred to by various names. The Cheras are referred as Kedalaputo (Sanskrit: "Kerala Putra") in the Emperor Ashoka's Pali third-century-BCE edicts. Pliny the Elder and Claudius Ptolemy referred to the Cheras as Kaelobotros and Kerobottros respectively, and the Graeco-Roman trade map Periplus Maris Erythraei refers to the Cheras as Keprobotras. These Graeco-Roman names are probably corruptions of the Indo-Aryan term "Kedala Puto/Kerala Putra".
The inscriptions record the construction of a rock shelter for Chenkayapan, a Jain monk on the occasion of the inauguration of Kadungon Ilam Kadungo, son of Perum Kadungon, the son of king Athan Chel Irumporai/Irumpurai as the heir apparent ("Ilamgo").[2] The three Chera royals can be identified with Chelva Kadungo Vazhi Athan, Perum Cheral Irumporai and Ilam Cheral Irumporai mentioned in the early Tamil literature (decades 7-9, Pathitruppathu Collection).[2]
The earliest Graeco-Roman accounts referring to the Cheras are by Pliny the Elder in the first century CE, in the Periplus text, and by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century. The Cheras are referred to as Kedalaputo (Sanskrit: "Kerala Putra") in the Emperor Ashoka's Pali edicts (third century BCE, Rock Edicts II and XII).
There are brief references in the works of Katyayana (c. third-to-fourth centuries BCE), the philosopher Patanjali (c. fifth century BCE), and Maurya statesman and philosopher Kautilya (Chanakya) (c. 3rd - 4th century BCE). The Sanskrit grammarian Panini (c. sixth-to-fifth centuries BCE) did not mention either the Kerala people or the land.
Archaeologists have found epigraphic and numismatic evidence of the early Cheras.
Recent archaeological discoveries confirm Karur as a political, economic and cultural centre of ancient south India. Excavations at Karur yielded huge quantities of copper coins with Chera symbols such as the bow and arrow, Roman amphorae and Roman coins. An ancient route, from harbours such as Muchiri and Thondi in Karela through the Palghat Gap to Karur in interior Tamil Nadu can be traced using archaeological evidence. Historians have yet to precisely locate Muziris, known in Tamil as Muchiri, a base of the Chera rulers. Archaeological excavations at Pattanam near Kochi suggest an identification with the location. Roman coins have been discovered in large numbers in central Kerala and the Coimbatore-Karur region from Kottayam-Kannur, Valluvally, Iyyal, Vellalur and Kattankanni.
A number of coins, assumed to be of the Cheras, which are mostly found in the bed of the Amaravati River in Tamil Nadu, are a major source of early Chera historiography. These include punch-marked coins. Square coins of copper and its alloys or silver have also been discovered. Most of these early square coins show a bow and arrow, the traditional emblem of the Cheras, on the obverse, with or without a legend. Silver-punch marked coins, an imitation of the Maurya coins, bearing a Chera bow on the reverse, have been reported. Bronze dyes for minting punch-marked coins were discovered in a riverbed in Karur. Hundreds of copper coins attributed to the Cheras have been discovered at Pattanam in central Kerala.
Other discoveries include a coin with a portrait and the Brahmi legend "Mak-kotai" above it and one with a portrait and the legend "Kuttuvan Kotai" above it. Both of these impure silver coins are tentatively dated to around the first century CE or a little later. The reverse sides of both coins are blank. Impure silver coins bearing Brahmi legends "Kollippurai"/"Kollipporai", "Kol-Irumporai" and "Sa Irumporai" were also discovered at Karur. A silver coin with the portrait of a person wearing a Roman-type bristled-crown helmet was also discovered in the Amaravati riverbed in Karur; its reverse side depicts a bow and arrow, the traditional symbol of the Chera family. The macro analysis of the Mak-kotai coin shows close similarities with the contemporaneous Roman silver coin.
These portrait coins are generally considered to be imitations of Roman coins. All legends, assumed to be the names of the Chera rulers, are in Tamil-Brahmi characters on the obverse. The reverse often depicts a bow and arrow symbol. An alliance between the Cholas is evident from a joint coin bearing the Chola tiger on the obverse and the Chera bow and arrow on the reverse. Lakshmi-type coins of possible Sri-Lankan origin have also been discovered at Karur.
The events described in the early Tamil texts, or the Sangam literature, are dated to around the first or second centuries CE based on the Gajabahu-Chenguttuvan synchronism, which is derived from certain verses in the Tamil epic poem Silappathikaram. Despite its reliance on a number of conjectures, this method is considered the sheet anchor for dating early historic South India, as complementary epigraphical and archaeological evidence broadly seems to support the Gajabahu chronology.
Ilango Adigal, the author of Silappathikaram, describes the renowned Chera ruler Chenguttuvan, a central figure in the epic, as his elder brother. He also mentions Chenguttuvan's consecration of a temple for the goddess Pattini (Kannaki) at Vanchi. According to the poem, a king named Gajabahu—identified with Gajabahu, a second-century ruler of Sri Lanka—was among those present at the Pattini temple consecration at Vanchi. Based on this context, Chenguttuvan and the other Chera rulers can be dated to either the first/the last quarter of the second century.
A large body of Tamil works from the c. second century BCE to third century CE, collectively known as the Sangam (Academy) literature, describes a number of Chera, and Pandya rulers. Among these, the most important sources for the Cheras are the Pathitrupathu, the Agananuru and the Purananuru. The Pathitrupattu, the fourth book in the Ettuthokai anthology, mentions several rulers (and possible heirs-apparents) of the Chera family. Each Chera is praised in ten songs sung by a court poet. The title Pathitrupathu indicates that there were ten texts, each consisting of a decad of lyrics; however, two of these have not yet been discovered. Additionally, the collection has not yet been worked into a connected history and settled chronology.
The following Cheras are knowns from Purananuru collection (some of the names are re-duplications).
Recent studies on early historic south Indian history suggest that the three major rulers – the Pandya, the Chera and the Chola – were customarily based in Madurai, Vanchi-Karuvur (Karur) and Uraiyur (Tiruchirappalli) in present-day Tamil Nadu, respectively. They had established outlets on the Indian Ocean at Korkai, Muchiri (Muziris), and Puhar, respectively.
The Chera country of the early historical period (pre-Pallava) consisted of present-day northern-central Kerala and the Kongu region of western Tamil Nadu. The southern tip of Kerala was controlled by the Ay dynasty, while the Ezhimala rulers controlled the northern regions. Multiple branches of the Chera family ruled simultaneously—one in central Kerala and the other in western Tamil Nadu—and they likely competed for leadership.
The political organization of society, or the body politic, of pre-Pallava (early historic) southern India is actively debated among historians. Some academics/scholars visualizes early historic south-Indian polities as hereditary monarchies (with a distinct area of jurisdiction, geographic boundaries, territory/sovereignty and security/law enforcement capabilities).
However, this view is sometimes questioned by scholars. According to them, the political organization of of the early Tamil polities was based on communal holding of resources and kinship-based production. Authority was determined by "the range of redistributive social relationships sustained through predatory accumulation of resources". Ancient south India was a combination of several "kinship based redistributive economies of chiefdoms" that were structured by the dominance of "agro-pastoral means of subsistence and predatory politics". Some historians explicitly uses the term "chief" and "chiefdom" for the Chera ruler and Chera polity of early historic south India, respectively.
Drawing conclusions from early Tamil poems and archaeological evidence is another point of contention.
In general, early Tamil texts or the Sangam literature (c. second century BCE - c. third century CE) reflect the southern Indian cultural tradition and some elements of the northern Indian cultural tradition, which by then was coming into contact with the south. Most of the Chera population, like the rest of southern India, probably followed native Dravidian belief systems. Religious practice might have mostly consisted of sacrifices to gods such as Murugan. The worship of departed heroes was common in the Tamil country, along with tree worship and other kinds of ancestor worship. The war goddess Korravai was propitiated with elaborate offerings of meat and toddy. Korravai was later assimilated into the present-day goddess Durga.
Early Tamil texts refers to several social stratifications in the early historic south Indian society. They sometimes use the term kudi ("group") to denote some type of antecedent to present-day caste.
In the early historic southern India, women were probably accorded high status (in comparison to the medieval period), and poets and musicians were held in high regard in society. Early Tamil texts include several references about the lavish patronage of court poets. Professional poets of all genders composed texts praising their patron rulers, for which they were generously rewarded. It is assumed the institution of "sabha" in south-Indian villages for local administration began during the early historic period.
Trading relations with merchants from Graeco-Roman world, or the Yavanas, and with northern India provided considerable economic momentum for southern India; the main economic activity was trade across the Indian Ocean. The earliest Graeco-Roman accounts referring to the Cheras are by Pliny the Elder in the first century, in the first-century text Periplus Maris Erythraei, and by Claudius Ptolemy in the second century. The Periplus Maris Erythraei portrays the trade in the territory of Cheras or "Keprobotras" in detail. The port of Muziris, or Muchiri in Tamil, located in the Chera country, was the most-important centre in the Malabar Coast, which according to the Periplus "abounded with large ships of Romans, Arabs and Greeks". Bulk spices, ivory, timber, pearls and gems were exported from Chera country, and southern India, to the Middle East/Mediterranean regions.
Geographical advantages, such as favorable monsoon winds that carried ships directly from Arabia to south India, the abundance of exotic spices in the interior Ghat Mountains and the many rivers connecting the Ghats with the Arabian Sea allowed the Cheras to become a major power in ancient southern India. Trading in spices and other commodities with Middle Eastern/Mediterranean Graeco-Roman navigators was perhaps extant before beginning of the Common Era and was consolidated in the first century CE. In the first century, the Romans conquered Egypt, which probably helped them gain dominance in the Indian Ocean spice trade.
The Graeco-Romans brought vast amounts of gold in exchange for commodities such as black pepper. The Roman coin hoards that have been found in Kerala and Tamil Nadu provide evidence of this trade. The first-century writer Pliny the Elder lamented "the drain of Roman gold into India and China" for luxuries such as spices, silk and muslin. The Indian Ocean spice trade dwindled with the decline of the Roman empire in the third and fourth centuries, and they were replaced by Chinese and Arab/Middle Eastern navigators.
The nature of the spice trade between ancient Chera country, and southern India, and the Middle East/Mediterranean regions is disputed. It is uncertain whether this trade with the Mediterranean world was managed on equal terms by the local rulers/merchants (such as the Chera and the Pandya). The early historic economy of inland southern India, as understood from the early Tamil literature, was a mostly a pastoral-cum-agrarian system. The political economy was probably semi-tribal ("kinship-based redistributive economies") and state/institution formation was incipient.
There are several ancient Tamil, Greek and Roman literary references to high-carbon steel from South Asia. The crucible steel production process probably started in the sixth century BCE in southern India (as evidenced from Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu, Golconda in Telangana, and Karnataka) and Sri Lanka. The Romans called this steel "the finest steel in the world" and referred to it as "Seric". It was perhaps exported to the Middle East/Mediterranean world by c. early 5th century BC.
The steel was exported as cakes of steely iron that were known as "wootz". Wootz steel was produced by heating black magnetite ore in the presence of carbon in a sealed clay crucible inside a charcoal furnace to completely remove slag. An alternative was to smelt the ore to give wrought iron, then heat and hammer it to remove slag. The carbon source was probably bamboo trees and leaves from plants such as avārai (Senna auriculata). The Chinese and Sri Lankans perhaps adopted the production methods of wootz steel from the south Indians by the fifth century BCE.
In Sri Lanka, this early steel-making method employed a unique wind furnace that was driven by the monsoon winds. Production sites from early historic period have been found at Anuradhapura, Tissamaharama and Samanalawewa, as well as imported iron and steel artefacts from Kodumanal in southern India. A c. 2th century BC Tamil trade guild in Tissamaharama, in the south-east of Sri Lanka, transported some of the oldest iron and steel artefacts and production processes to the island from early historic southern India.
After about the fifth century, the Chera family's political prestige and influence compared to the early historic or pre-Pallava period significantly declined. Comparatively little is known about Cheras during this period. The Chera branch from Kongu country based at Karur that was also called the "Keralas" seems to have dominated former Chera territories, including present-day Kerala.
The region was affected by the rise of the Kalabhras, and then by the Chalukya and Pallava-Pandya domination, and the ascent of the Rashtrakutas and Cholas. Present-day central Kerala probably detached from the eight-to-ninth-century "Kongu Chera"/"Kerala kingdom" to form the "Chera Perumal kingdom". The Chera Perumal kingdom had alternating friendly and hostile relations with the Cholas and the Pandyas. The Cholas attacked kingdom and eventually forced it into submission in the early 11th century in to break the monopoly of spice trade with the Middle East. When the Perumal kingdom was eventually dissolved in the 12th century, most of its autonomous chiefdoms became independent. Academics tend to identify the Alvar saint Kulasekhara and the Nayanar saint Cherman Perumal (literally "the Chera king") with some of the earliest Perumals. The port of Kollam in the kingdom was a major point in Indian trade with the Middle East and with East Asia.
General info from Wikipedia.org