Brihadisvara Temple
World Architecture
Brihadisvara Temple
Thanjavur, India
The so-called Big Temple, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur Tanjore in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu,
was built between a.d. 1003 and 1010. It is the epitome of Dravidian temple architecture and a
wonderful gallery of South Indian art and craft. Vijayalaya Cholan a.d. 846 871, founder of the
Chola dynasty, chose the well-established settlement beside the River Kaveri as his capital, and for
four centuries Chola influence on Indian religion, culture, art, and architecture spread from the royal
city. Thanjavur is now a country town of about 200,000 people.
Chola dominion was extended under Vijayalayas son Aditya I, the beginning of an empire that
reached its apogee of power and prosperity under the greatest Chola ruler, Rajaraja
Arunmozhivarma, soon after he became king in a.d. 985. By about 1005 he subjugated much of southern India, and the dynasty eventually controlled the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and parts of Sri Lanka. His conquests complete, until his death in 1014 Rajaraja turned his thoughts to religion and the arts, initiating many temples and replacing older brick shrines with ones of stone.
Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur, India architects unknown, 1003 1010. Inner and outer eastern gatehouses.
Although remarkably open-minded in religious matters, Rajaraja was a pious devotee of Siva, and the greatest of his cultural achievements was a masterpiece of South Indian art and architecture, the Brihadisvara at Thanjavur also known as Peruvudaiyar Koil. He named it Rajarajeswaram. The temple precinct occupies most of the Sivaganga Fort, which was enclosed within perimeter walls in the sixteenth century. The fort is now bounded on the east and west by moats, and on the south by the Grand Anaicut Channel, part of an extensive eleventh-century irrigation, system. To the north is the Sivaganga Garden, which also postdates the temple.
The Brihadisvara Temple stands within two concentric rectangular spaces. The outer court, measuring 793 by 397 feet 238 by 119 meters, is entered at its eastern end through a magnificent towered gatehouse, flanked by shrines dedicated to Ganapathi and Mrurgan. Facing the outer gatehouse is a similar structure, 90 feet 27 meters high, that gives access to the carefully planned 500-by-250-foot 150-by-75-meter stone- and brick-paved inner courtyard, at whose western end stands the main shrine of Sri Brihadisvara.
The temple proper, so to speak, is a complex suite of several elements. Although they are separate structures, they form an entity, the garbhagrihamthat is, the holy of holiessurrounded by a 1,500-foot 450-meter colonnaded cloister prakaram. The cloisters two levels, although, dimly lit, are decorated with brilliantly colored frescoes from the Chola period, depicting the lives of the sixty-four Nayanmars Saivite saints, the sacred bull nandi, and the ceremonial mount of Siva. There are also sculptured panels showing the Bharata Natyam dance
postures karanas and the manifestations of Siva known as Sivalingams. Altogether, there are about
250 Sivalingams throughout the temple complex: the largest, 29 feet 8.7 meters high, is set in a two-
story sanctum. The main shrine also includes a large hall with open aisles Maha-mandapam,
intended for religious discourse another terraced hall enclosing the shrine of Sri Thyagarajar and
various ancillary halls for storing religious trappings and housing musicians. Standing in an
elaborately decorated open hall in the inner court is a massive monolithic nandi, 12 feet 3.6 meters
high and nearly 20 feet 6 meters long. There are several subshrines in the complex, but only one
seems to have been built at the same time as the main temple.
The inner court is dominated by the 96-foot-square 29-meter granite base of the vimana, a tower that
rises through fourteen diminishing stories to a height of almost 220 feet 66 meters. Its facades are
encrusted with hundreds of stucco figures of the myriad Hindu gods, standing in niches between
carefully wrought pilasters. The vimana is crowned with an octagonal dome sikaram resting on an
80-ton 7.3-tonne granite structure contrary to popular accounts, it is not a single block, enriched
with nandis at each corner. Rising above the dome is a 12.5-foot 3.8-meter finial kalasam ending
in a copper pot overlaid with gold plate, a gift of King Rajaraja. The generous endowments of the
devout king and his sister Kundavai to the temple are recorded in inscriptions on the walls of the
vimana. Everywhere, the surfaces of the building provide a vehicle for Chola art, making the
Brihadisvara more than just an architectural masterpieceit is also a magnificent repository of the
highest artistic and craft skills of a golden age. Someone has said that the Chola artists conceived like
giants and finished like jewelers. The temple was added to UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1987.
Beginning with Rajaraja the Great, the piety of the Chola dynasty is evidenced by more than seventy
temples built in and near Thanjavur over the next two centuries. Noteworthy among them were
Gangaikondacholisvaram Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, whose vimana was a little shorter
than that at Thanjavur the more diminutive Airavateswarar Temple at Darasuram, described by one
critic asa sculptors dream re-lived in stone and the Kampahareswarar Temple at Tribhuvanam. In
each of the four, the vimana was tallerusually much tallerthan the towers of the entrance gates
after them, Chola architects returned to their traditional forms, in which the relative heights were
reversed.