Great Temple by Great Tamil King Raja Raja Cholan

May 17th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized

The lost temples - BBC Documentary

Deep in the south of India lie the spectacular remains of one of the world’s most remarkable and most forgotten civilisations. In its heyday it was one of the halfdozen greatest powers on Earth. It controlled half a million square miles more than five times the size of Britain. And under its wing literacy and the arts flourished.

Yet today, 1,000 years later, the Chola Empire is remembered only by a handful of specialist historians. If it had been European, or had given its name to some still surviving nation, things might be different. But despite 400 years of glory, the Chola Empire disappeared from history; a sad fate for a civilisation which was among the most remarkable produced by the medieval world.

In some ways, it was the most significant of the dozen or so empires which rose and fell during India’s long, tumultuous history. It lasted some 460 years, longer than any of them. The Chola was also the only Asian empire (bar the Japanese) to have indulged, albeit briefly, in overseas expansion. It conquered Sri Lanka, the Andaman and Nicobar islands and, temporarily, parts of southeast Asia the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali, and the southern part of the Malay peninsula.

Most of these overseas conquests are shrouded in mystery. All that is known is that, in 1025, the Chola emperor Rajendra I dispatched an army, presumably on a large fleet, across 2000 miles of ocean to conquer the southern half of southeast Asia. The records show that he succeeded and received the submission of large numbers of cities. Some historians believe that the Cholas then simply sailed back to India, but others suspect that Chola power persisted in some form in southeast Asia for two or three generations.

Certainly, the Chola conquest contributed to a long process that had already started and which linked southern India and southeast Asia together in terms of trade and religion. The Indonesia/Malay region was a pivotal point in trade between China and India (and, indeed, the West), and both Java and Bali were largely Hindu. Rajendra’s conquest was perhaps the first military expression of a more general connection which had been developing for centuries.

Closer to home, in Sri Lanka, the Cholas’ overseas expansion is better documented, both in text, and in stone. Tourists today can still explore the great ruined city of Polonnaruva, founded by the Cholas as a capital for their newly conquered island territory.

But the emperor’s armies didn’t only head southwards.  In the early 11th century, Chola forces marched almost 1000 miles through India to the banks of the Ganges.  Like the southeast Asian  conquest, this epic ”long march” is also  shrouded in mystery.  Whether the emperor’s objectives in marching an army to the  sacred river  were political  or purely  religious  is unknown. Certainly, the north of India, though temporarily subdued, was  not incorporated  into  the empire although  holy Ganges water was carried  back to a great new capital named in honour of the sacred river, and the ruler who had conquered it.

This capital was called Gangaikondacholapuram literally ”the City to which the Chola emperor brought the Ganges”. At the  centre of their new  metropolis, the Cholas built a magnificent temple and a vast three milelong reservoir symbolically to hold  the ”captured” waters of the Ganges.  Both have survived. Under Chola rule, religion and politics grew ever closer together,  with the emperor projecting himself as the representative, almost a manifestation, of God on Earth.  Large temples were built, for the first time, as  royal establishments.  The Cholas probably  built more temples than any other Indian kingdom or empire.  Each temple was a masterpiece. Even today, the Chola heartland along the Kaveri River in the state of Tamil Nadu  is full of  beautiful, delicately carved temples, some the size of tiny chapels, others as big as European cathedrals. In the very centre of what was the empire, there are  still 40 Chola temples in an area half the size of greater London.  The most  spectacular  structure  is the  63m high pyramid shaped central shrine  in the  city of  Thanjavur, the  Chola  capital before Gangaikondacholapuram.

Chola art and  architecture were among the  finest in the world.  Indeed, in cast bronze sculpture  and hardstone sculpture,  Chola art is unsurpassed.  Millions of  figures, deftly carved in granite, can still be  seen on their  temples, while in museums, in  Thanjavur and  Madras, visitors  can marvel at the artistry  and  craftsmanship of  the bronze  figurines and statues.

The Cholas not only nurtured an artistic boom; they  also fostered a massive expansion in education. Political stability and imperial grants both to the  temples which ran education and to the students themselves led to the expansion of local schools  and elite  colleges for higher castes.  The education system which operated  from a religious perspective but also promoted  literacy, mathematics  and  astronomy was probably, at least in  part, responsible for the development of a  competent imperial administration  and broadened international horizons.  Some estimates  suggest that literacy rose to around 20 per cent perhaps the highest in the medieval world.

An unplanned result  of this high level of  education was an increase  in intellectual  dissidence.  One of the greatest Indian  religious thinkers the 11thcentury philosopher Ramanuja was a  product  of the  Chola empire, although  he  was ultimately expelled  for his  views.  In many ways, he  can be seen as the founder of  Hindu monotheism with his  belief in a unitary personal god, the ultimate font of love and compassion.

In the  12th century  there flourished  an even more dissident religious  movement.  The Lingayats  professed  a sort  of cynical humanism which questioned the very fundamentals of religion the authority of India’s holy books, the Vedas (the equivalent of the Bible), and  reincarnation itself. Socially, they were also radical, challenging  the taboo on widows remarrying, and condemning child marriages. This dissident movement derived much support from the lower castes.

The empire also increased the  importance and institutionalisation of local government. Each group of five to 10 villages had an elected district council, which in  turn had endless subcommittees dealing  with everything  from land rights to irrigation, law  and order  to food  storage.  Every  household  in a district had the right to vote and the councils enjoyed considerable power.  The Chola emperors encouraged their development, probably  as a  counterbalance  to the  power  of local vassal rulers, who owed obedience to the empire.

Although the  Cholas ruled for  more  than four  centuries, they did so with a remarkable light touch. Local responsibility for local  affairs  was encouraged, and  newly  conquered local rulers were allowed to keep their titles and lands, though under ultimate Chola control.

The light touch was brought even to waging war. The Cholas exemplified  the  Indian principle  of war the  dharma yuddha, literally, the  principle of  the fair fight.  Battles were normally prearranged and fought in daylight on a level field between equal numbers of troops.  Defeated princes  could carry on living and  prospering, but had to  pay homage and cough up tribute for the  emperor’s treasury and women to act as concubines and courtiers.

Presiding over this  mixture of autocracy and democracy, a cocktail of  religious orthodoxy and dissidence, and a surge of artistic  creativity not to  mention  their  concubines the Chola  emperors considered  themselves the rulers  of the world. They  did, of course, look  on India  as  the Continent of  the Cosmos.

Yet now they are forgotten, their  achievements ignored by the world.  There  is not one book in print on the Chola Empire; nor a travel company tour to most of their extraordinary temples.

Where to go and what to see

See Raja Raja Cholan’s Great Temple of Tanjore - BBC Documentary

*** spectacular ** very interesting * interesting

1 CIDAMBARAM **

Spectacular Chola temple with rich sculpture, a magnificent pavilion with 984 pillars, and a shrine to the sun god complete with stone  chariot wheels.  Here, one  of the  Hindu trinity of gods, Siva, is said  to have  performed  his  cosmic dance  of joy.  A delightful  story has it that  Siva’s wife,  Parvati, challenged him to a dance  contest, which took  place where  the temple now stands.  Siva won by way of a  clever ruse. He contrived to drop his earring so that he could pick it up and put it back with his toe; his spouse was, however, too modest  to raise her leg and lost.

2 DARASURAM **

Marvellous temple built by  the Chola Emperor Rajaraja II in the mid12th century. One beautiful pavilion in imitation of a war chariot has wheels and rearing horses. See also relief portraying the lives of the 63 saints of the god Siva.

3 GANGAIKONDACHOLAPURAM ***

See  the magnificent  and richly  sculpted  Brihadishvara Temple, built of  granite as the  centrepiece of a new  Chola capital in circa AD1025.  The main shrine  is 160ft (50m)  high.  The threemile 11thcentury  Cholaganga reservoir (for  sacred water) also survives.

4 KALIYAPATTI *  The ”Place of Stone”. Small temple, c 900

5 KILAIYUR * Double shrine, c 900.

6 KODUMBALUR ** Triple shrine, c 900.

7 KUMBAKONAM **

Beautiful  sculptures of female  dancers and  musicians, the sun god and the  god Siva in the  form of a  divine young  ascetic adorn the  Nagesvara Temple, built  c 870.  According to  legend, this riverside temple was  built where a  pot was washed  ashore containing the seed of creation and the Hindu bible.

8 MELAKKADAMBUR **

Chola temple, c 1100, with  magnificent  sculptures of  mythical animals, dancing women and sages.

9 NARTTAMALAI **

Constructed  c 870, the Vijayalaya  Cholesvara Temple is said to have been built by the first Chola emperor, Vijayalaya.

10 PANANGUDI * Chola temple built c 900.

11 POLONNARUVA (in  Sri Lanka)  ***

Ruins of a great city founded as a new capital for the island by the Chola emperor  Rajaraja following his conquest of  Sri Lanka in 993.  Visit the many medieval  buildings, including two Chola temples. Because they are not functioning temples, it is possible to visit the sacred innner sanctums, where  one can see examples of that most important of Hindu symbols, the stone obelisk called the lingam.  It represents  the creativity and  fertility of the human phallus and the safety and shade of the archetypal tree.

12 PULLAMANGAI **

One of the most beautiful of all Chola temples, c 910. Perfectly preserved, with miniature relief.

13 SRINIVASANALLUR **

See the 10thcentury  temple of  Koranganatha the  Lord of the Monkey.  Beautiful sculptures  of medieval worshippers  in their aristocratic clothes.

14 SRIRANGAM ***

This most important temple to  the god Vishnu  in southern India has exquisite  carvings of female musicians.  It is dedicated to a young girl called Andal who became enraptured with Vishnu.

15 SWAMIMALAI **

Regarded,  mythologically, as a  sort of  divine  weapons  store, this Chola temple is dedicated to the war god Murugan.

16 THANJAVUR (also spelt Tanjore or Tanjavur) ***

Once the capital of the  Chola empire, this  town is home to the greatest  of all Chola buildings the Rajarajesvara (or Brihadishvara) temple. Built in AD1010 by the emperor Rajaraja the Great, it is 210ft (63m) high the tallest temple in all India. On top of  its sumptuously  sculpted pyramidshaped  tower is an 80ton cupola, said to be  fashioned out of a  single block of  granite placed there with the aid of a fourmile temporary ramp.

17 TIRUKANDIYUR * Small Chola temple.

18 TIRUKKATTALAI * The ”temple of the holy command”, c 900.

19 TIRUPPUR * Temple, c 900.

20 TIRUVAIYARU *

By uttering  the mystical (and  apparently  meaningless) word ol, the Chola poet Sundarar succeeded in parting the waters, Red Sea style, of the Chola heartland’s  great river, Kaveri, so that he and a visiting king could  praise the god Siva at  the temple of Tiruvaiyaru on the other side.

21 TIRUVANNAMALAI **

This temple  with  stone  sculptures  depicting  108 classical Indian dance  poses was built  in the place where  Siva turned himself  into what he claimed was an  eternal unending pillar of fire.

22 TIRUVARUR *

The temple is  built  at the  legendary  scene of a great  Chola miracle of death and resurrection. The son of a Chola king out joyriding, as  princes will, in one  of the royal chariots ran over and killed a calf.  A somewhat  distraught cow the calf’s mother complained to the king, who was  furious and decided to punish  his son by  killing  him.  Understandably he  found this difficult, indeed morally impossible. So, obligingly, the king’s prime  minister carried out the  execution.  Filled with sadness, both prime minister and king committed suicide.  But all was not lost, for the god Siva decided to resurrect them all.

23 TIRUVELVIKKUDI * See the temple of Manavalesvara.

24 TRIBHUVANEM **

See the  Kampaharesvara  temple,  built  by  the  Chola  emperor Kulottunga III in c 1200.

25 VIRALUR * See the Bhumisvara temple, c 880.

26 VISALUR * Small temple.