Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur

Rajaraja I, the Chola emperor who dominated south India at the turn of the first millennium, built this temple to Shiva at Thanjavur between 1003 and 1010 and named it after himself: Rajarajesvaram. Locals simply call it the Big Temple, Periya Kovil, and the name is fair. Its granite tower over the sanctum rises about 63 metres in sixteen storeys, thirteen of them diminishing squares, and is capped by a single block of granite said to weigh 80 tonnes, with pairs of Nandi bulls at its corners. Nothing built in south India before it came close in scale, and it remains the model of the mature Chola style.

The complex is a long rectangle of roughly 240 by 120 metres, entered from the east through two stone gateways, the second more richly carved than the first. Inside, a colonnaded cloister about 450 metres around encloses the courtyard. A monolithic Nandi, some 6 metres long and 25 tonnes in weight, faces the sanctum from its own pavilion; the lingam inside, which only priests may approach, is almost 9 metres tall and among the largest in India. Later dynasties added shrines to Parvati, Murugan and others, and the French, who used the temple as an arsenal in 1777, gave it its outer defensive wall.

Some of the best things are easy to miss. On the upper corridor of the sanctum the sculptors carved 81 of the 108 classical dance poses of the Natya Shastra, leaving the remaining 27 blocks blank for reasons nobody knows. The walls around the sanctum carry Chola frescoes, rediscovered in 1931 beneath later Nayak paintings, showing Shiva but also court life, a guru under a banyan tree and animals shying from a cobra. An inscription of 1011 lists more than 600 people on the temple payroll, from dance masters and musicians to washermen and accountants, with their wages in land.

This is a living temple, not a museum. It belongs to the UNESCO site of the Great Living Chola Temples, alongside the later Chola temples at Gangaikonda Cholapuram and the Airavatesvara temple, but worship continues daily, and every February, around Mahashivratri, the Brahan Natyanjali festival brings classical dancers to perform in the courtyard over ten days.

Getting there

The temple stands in Thanjavur, less than 1 km from the town centre. The nearest airport is Tiruchirappalli International (TRZ), about 45 km away in a straight line. Thanjavur Junction railway station lies on the line between Chennai and Tiruchirappalli via Kumbakonam, and the town is well served by Tamil Nadu state buses.