Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Nagapattinam

Probable Archaeology

Nagapattinam is an old port town on the Tamil Nadu coast. Kings from faraway Sumatra and Java paid to build Buddhist temples there for the traders who visited.

Nagapattinam is an old port town on the Tamil Nadu coast. Digs there, between 1856 and 1934, found as many as 350 Buddhist bronze statues. They date from the 800s to the 1600s CE. Old copper plates say a king of Srivijaya, a sea kingdom based in Sumatra, built a Buddhist shrine here. A Chola king named Rajaraja I gave his permission. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 7-8, section ‘Nagappattinam’]

For scholars

Only one source was read here. So the tier stops at Probable. The copper-plate record is known through this source’s summary. It has not been checked against the original inscription edition. Nagapattinam is not a Kalinga port. It is a documented Bay of Bengal trading partner, linked to the Srivijaya sea kingdom. The bronze statues span many centuries. That range only partly matches the periods tagged for this entry. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 7-8, section ‘Nagappattinam’]

Facts

Coordinates
10.78°, 79.83°
[Dayalan, 2019]
  1. Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019
Modern name
Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu
Region
south-india
Scholar notes

Only one source was read, so the tier stops at Probable; the Leyden copper-plate inscriptions (Epigraphia Indica XXII, 1933-34) are known here only through Dayalan's summary, not an independent reading of the edition. Not a Kalinga port; included as a documented Bay of Bengal / Srivijaya trading partner. The bronze-image date range (9th-17th century CE) is broad and only partly matches the tagged periods.

  1. Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019 , offprint pp. 7-8, section 'Nagappattinam' ('Nagappattinam (10 deg 47' N; 79 deg 50' E) ...' Diggings 1856-1934 'yielded as many as 350 Buddhist bronze images ranging from the 9th ... to the 16th-17th centuries CE.' Leyden copper plates record a vihara built by the Srivijaya king there, permitted by Rajaraja Chola I.)