Invoking the sacred fire...

Chapter 1Part One — Kings and Conquests
Out of the Sangam Dawn
Before the empire, there were the early Cholas of the Sangam age — one of the three crowned Tamil dynasties, ruling the fertile Kaveri delta from Uraiyur. The warrior-king Karikala tamed the river with embankments and won the field at Venni, but after the Sangam centuries the line slipped into the shadows for five hundred years.