Underwater Excavations off Poompuhar Recover a West Asian ‘Torpedo Jar’, Adding to Evidence of the Chola Port’s Sea Trade

The news

Poompuhar (Mayiladuthurai district, Tamil Nadu). An 18-day underwater exploration off Poompuhar, the ancient Chola port city, has recovered a fragment of a West Asian “torpedo jar”, four terracotta ring wells and more than 250 ceramic fragments, among other finds, The Indian Express reports in an explainer by Nikita Mohta. The exploration was conducted by the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology (TNSDA) with the Indian Maritime University. Poompuhar, also known as Kaveripoompattinam, lies at the mouth of the 800-km-long Cauvery river, where it enters the Bay of Bengal, and features prominently in Sangam and post-Sangam literature. It is believed to have been the capital of the early Cholas. A 2011 archaeology report by R. Poonkundran, K. Sridharan and others said the carbon date of a log of wood recovered from Poompuhar showed that the city “seems to have been in existence from 5th-4th century BCE”. The city is said to have had three divisions: Maruvurppakkam along the seashore, Pattinappakkam to the west, and Nalangadi between the two. The port was busy and crowded during the Chola period; merchandise exported from it was stamped with a tiger symbol indicating Chola origin, and, according to Poonkundran and Sridharan, “articles from Ganges region, food products from Ceylon and spices from Java were imported”. The torpedo jar fragment, of a fine ceramic vessel with an estimated diameter of 30 to 35 cm, belongs to a type historically used to carry liquid cargo such as wine and olive oil across oceans, and the paper calls it proof of Poompuhar’s links with West Asia and the Mediterranean world. The Express notes this is not entirely new: a 1996 paper by Sila Tripati, A.S. Gaur and others recorded that ships from Tamralipti in Bengal and Palur in Odisha visited Poompuhar, “whence all sea-going vessels set sail for the Southeast Asian countries, Arabia and Rome”, and that brick structures, ring wells, storage jars and megalithic pottery offshore showed habitation extended beyond the present shoreline. A ring well is a shaft lined with stacked terracotta rings, built on dry land to reach fresh water; finding them on the seabed suggests a buried palaeochannel — an ancient riverbed submerged by coastal erosion and rising sea levels. Catastrophic floods are believed to have swallowed large parts of the city around the 4th or 5th century CE, and studies point to a possible tsunami around the 3rd century CE; one view is that only part of the city was engulfed, which Poonkundran and Sridharan consider more probable. A legend retold in Sreelata Menon’s 2025 book In Search of Lost Cities says the sea swallowed the city after its grieving king failed to hold the Indra Vizha festival. The syllabus link is GS1 on Indian art and culture and the history of ancient India’s maritime trade.

Static syllabus linkage

1. Sangam literature describes Puhar as a great cosmopolitan port. Silappatikaram, the Tamil epic attributed to Ilango Adigal, opens in Puhar with the story of the merchant Kovalan and his wife Kannagi, and describes its markets, foreign merchants and the Indra festival. Pattinappalai, a poem in the Pattuppattu collection composed in praise of the Chola king Karikala, describes the port’s warehouses, goods bearing the tiger emblem and ships from distant lands. Manimekalai, the companion epic, narrates the city being swallowed by the sea after the festival for Indra was neglected, the same legend the Express recounts. Sangam poems also mention the Yavanas, a term used for Greek, Roman and West Asian traders, who brought wine and gold and bought pepper and textiles.
2. The Indo-Roman trade left physical evidence along the Tamil coast. Arikamedu near Puducherry, excavated by Mortimer Wheeler in 1945, yielded Roman amphorae, Arretine ware and other evidence of a trading station of the early centuries CE. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a first-century CE Greek sailing guide, and the geographer Ptolemy describe ports along the Tamil coast. Roman gold and silver coins have been found in large hoards across south India. Amphorae and torpedo jars are the archaeologist’s tracers of long-distance liquid trade, because their shapes and fabrics can be linked to production regions.
3. The Cholas moved from a Sangam-age chiefdom to an imperial naval power. The early Cholas of the Sangam age, among them Karikala, ruled from Uraiyur and Puhar. The imperial Chola dynasty revived from the ninth century CE under Vijayalaya, with its capital at Thanjavur and later Gangaikonda Cholapuram. Rajaraja I extended Chola power to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and Rajendra I launched a naval expedition against the Srivijaya kingdom in Southeast Asia around 1025 CE. The tiger remained the Chola emblem across both periods, which is why the tiger stamp in Puhar’s trade connects the port with a long dynastic tradition.
4. Underwater archaeology in India combines central, State and scientific institutions. The Archaeological Survey of India, under the Ministry of Culture, is the premier body for archaeological research and protects monuments under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, and it has an Underwater Archaeology Wing. The Marine Archaeology Centre of the CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography in Goa pioneered Indian underwater exploration, including the investigations off Dwarka led by S.R. Rao and the earlier surveys off Poompuhar. State archaeology departments, such as Tamil Nadu’s, conduct their own excavations. Tamil Nadu’s recent work at Keeladi, Sivagalai and Adichanallur has made archaeology a subject of public and political interest in the State.

Why UPSC loves this

1. Prelims has repeatedly asked about ancient ports and Sangam texts. UPSC has asked about the location and significance of ancient ports and about the content of Sangam literature. Poompuhar’s other name, its river, the Chola tiger emblem, Silappatikaram and Pattinappalai are all high-probability facts.
2. GS1 asks about India’s maritime heritage and cultural exchange. Mains questions on the Indian Ocean trade and on the spread of Indian culture to Southeast Asia can draw on the Tamralipti–Palur–Puhar route and the Chola naval expeditions.
3. Heritage meets climate change as a new cross-cutting theme. A drowned palaeochannel and a city swallowed by the sea link history to coastal erosion and sea-level rise, which lets an answer connect GS1 with GS3 on disasters and climate.

Analysis

1. The torpedo jar is best read as evidence of continuity rather than of the Sangam age alone. The Express rightly calls the jar proof of West Asian links, but a single fragment raises a dating question the report does not settle. Torpedo jars are commonly associated in scholarship with West Asian production of the first millennium CE, which may place this find later than the Sangam-era Yavana trade celebrated in poetry. If so, it would suggest that Puhar or its surviving parts kept trading after the floods, which is itself important. Stratified dating of the find, not only its type, will decide which story it tells. This caution strengthens rather than weakens the case for systematic, peer-reviewed underwater excavation.
2. Literature and archaeology are finally being read together. For long, Puhar’s grandeur rested on Silappatikaram and Pattinappalai, which critics treated as poetic exaggeration. Carbon dates, offshore structures and now imported pottery give physical backing to what the poets described. The legend of the sea swallowing the city after a neglected festival reads, in this light, as a cultural memory of a real coastal disaster. The method matters for aspirants: history built on converging evidence is stronger than either source alone.
3. The seabed ring wells are a climate record as much as a heritage find. Ring wells were built on dry land for fresh water, so wells under the sea mark a coastline that has moved. The palaeochannel they suggest shows how rivers, sediment and sea level reshape deltas over centuries. Today’s Cauvery delta faces erosion, saline intrusion and rising seas, and the same processes that drowned Puhar are at work on modern settlements. Archaeology can thus inform coastal zone planning by showing how far and how fast a coast has changed.
4. State-led archaeology has cultural politics, and that need not be a weakness. Tamil Nadu’s investment in excavations such as Keeladi and now Poompuhar is part of an assertion of Tamil antiquity and identity. Critics worry that political motivation can push interpretation ahead of evidence. The safeguard is not to discourage State archaeology but to insist on publication, peer review and collaboration with national institutions such as the NIO and ASI. Partnering with the Indian Maritime University is a promising sign, since underwater work needs marine engineering skills that archaeologists alone do not have.
5. Maritime heritage supports India’s present-day Indian Ocean narrative. India now presents itself as a maritime nation through initiatives such as SAGAR and the development of ports, and heritage offers soft power. Evidence of ancient trade from Tamralipti and Palur through Puhar to Southeast Asia, Arabia and Rome gives that narrative historical depth. The risk is turning archaeology into branding; the opportunity is funding the specialised capacity — divers, conservation labs, site protection — that India’s long coastline requires.

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