INDIA, January 18, 2025 (BBC): It’s 1000 CE – the heart of the Middle Ages. Europe is in flux. The powerful nations we know today – like Norman-ruled England and the fragmented territories that will go on to become France – do not yet exist. Towering Gothic cathedrals have yet to rise. Aside from the distant and prosperous city of Constantinople, few great urban centres dominate the landscape. Yet that year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from southern India was preparing to build the world’s most colossal temple. Completed just 10 years later, it was 216 ft tall, assembled from 130,000 tons of granite: second only to Egypt’s pyramids in height. At its heart was a 12ft tall emblem of the Hindu God Shiva, sheathed in gold encrusted with rubies and pearls. In its lamplit hall were 60 bronze sculptures, adorned with thousands of pearls gathered from the island of Lanka. In its treasuries were several tons of gold and silver coins, as well as necklaces, jewels, trumpets and drums.

He was called Raja-Raja, King of Kings, and he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Cholas. His family transformed how the medieval world worked – yet they are largely unknown outside India. Prior to the 11th Century, the Cholas had been one of the many powers that dotted the Kaveri floodplain, the great body of silt that flows through India’s present-day state of Tamil Nadu. But what set the Cholas apart was their endless capacity for innovation. In addition to its precious treasures, the great temple received 5,000 tons of rice annually, from conquered territory across southern India. This allowed the Brihadishvara to function as a mega-ministry of public works and welfare, an instrument of the Chola state, intended to channel Rajaraja’s vast fortunes into new irrigation systems, expanding cultivation, and vast new herds of sheep and buffalo. Few states in the world could have conceived of economic control at such scale and depth. It is not a coincidence that Chola bronzes – especially Nataraja bronzes – can be found in most major Western museum collections. Scattered across the world, they are the remnants of a period of brilliant political innovations, and of maritime expeditions that connected the globe.

More on the Chola Dynasty at source..
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm27zn0vl33o

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