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The Chola Empire
The Cholas came to
power in the late 9th century, and until the late 13th century, they ruled
most of South India, Sri Lanka, the Maldive Islands, and even parts of the
Indonesian island of Java from their homeland near Thanjavur (Tanjore) on
the southeastern coast of what is now Tamil Nadu, India. It was
founded by Vijalaya, who captured Tanjore in 850 AD. The greatest among
the Chola rulers were the imperialists Rajaraja (985-1014 AD) and his son Rajendra I (1012
1044 AD). These rulers adopted a maritime policy allowing their
expansionist arm to reach far longer than pure land expansion would allow,
Maldives and Sri Lanka. Under Rajaraja the Chola kingdom grew into an extensive and
well knit empire. The
empire maintained diplomatic ties with countries as distant as Burma
(Myanmar), China, and Malaysia across the Indian Ocean.
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Click
here to learn more about the
Pala dynasty in Bihar and Bengal.
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Now the Chola rulers
are remembered most for what they created rather than for what they
conquered. Chola rulers were active patrons of the arts, and
during their reign, poetry, drama, music, and dance flourished.
They also constructed enormous stone temple complexes decorated
inside and out with painted and sculpted representations of the
Hindu gods. Some of the best-known artistic remains from this
time period are the
bronzes that were commissioned for each temple as well as the
magnificent Dravidian temples of south India.
While the
stone sculptures and the inner sanctum image empowering the
temple remained immovable, changing religious concepts during the
10th century demanded that the deities take part in a variety of
public roles similar to those of a human monarch. As a result,
large bronze images were created to be carried outside the temple to
participate in daily rituals, processions, and temple festivals.
The round lugs and holes found on the bases of many of these
sculptures are for the poles that were used to carry the heavy
images. Admired for the sensuous depiction of the figure and
the detailed treatment of their clothing and jewelry, Chola-period
bronzes were created using the
lost wax technique.
Although bronze casting has a long history in South India, a much larger and
a much greater number of bronze sculptures were cast during the Chola period
than before, further attesting to the importance of bronze sculpture during
this period. The beautiful Nataraja figure was first conceived during
the Chola empire. It should be noted that when in worship, these
images are covered in silk cloths, garlands, and jewels, and would not
appear as they do outside a religious context. Decorating the
bronzes in this way is a tradition at least a thousand years old as such
decorations are referred to in 10th-century Chola inscriptions.
During this
period, several regional languages branched off from Sanskrit. Marthi
evolved from the local Prakrit, while Tamil, Telugu and Kannada stemmed from
a Dravidian root, but owed much to Sanskrit. Under the Cholas, the
Dravidian style of temple architecture, exclusive to the south, attained its
most magnificent form. An example is the Brihadiswara temple at
Tanjore, built by Rajendra I.
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