The Cholas are also noteworthy as the one dynasty of India which, if only for a while, adopted a maritime policy, expanding their power by sea. Under the great Chola emperors Rajaraja I (985-1014) and Rajendra I (1012-44), first Ceylon was conquered and then the whole eastern seaboard of India as far as the Ganga.

Finally, under Rajendra, a great naval expedition sailed across the Bay of Bengal and occupied strategic points in Sumatra, Malaya, and Burma. This Chola maritime empire, the only certain instance of Indian overseas expansion by force of arms, was not an enduring one.

Later Chola rulers became once more involved in the endemic wars with the Chalukyas and lost interest in their overseas possessions. Within fifty years of the ex­pedition all the Chola troops had been withdrawn to the mainland. Later the Cholas weakened, and were replaced as the dominant power in Tamilnadu by the Pandyas, whose capital was the sacred city of Madurai, in the extreme south.

The whole of the peninsula was shaken to its foundations by the invasions of the troops of Sultan ‘Ala’u’d-Din Khalji of Delhi (1296-1316), led by his general Malik Kafur. As a result the Deccan came under Muslim domination for 400 years, but the south remained under Hindu control, after a brief inter­lude when a short-lived Muslim sultanate ruled from Madurai.

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The hegemony of the Dravidian south fell to the Empire of Vijayanagara, founded in 1336 and surviving until 1565, when its forces were defeated by a coalition of Deccan sultans. This was the last of the great empires on the old Hindu model, and by the time of its fall the Portuguese were already controlling the seas around India.

The long period whose history we have outlined above is sometimes thought of as one of decline, when compared with the stable and urbane days of the Guptas. This judgement is true in some particulars. The literature of the period, though it includes many important works, has nothing as near per­fection as the main works of Kalidasa.

There is much excellent sculpture from this period, but nothing as fine as the best Gupta productions. Yet in archi­tecture there was an immense advance over Gupta times, and, only a century or two before the Muslims occupied northern India, there arose such splendid temples as those at Khajuraho, Bhubaneswar, Kanchlpuram, and Thanjavur, among many others.