Gangaikonda Cholapuram Brihadeeswarar Temple

The village around it is small and flat, so the tower comes as a surprise: nine storeys of stone that, unlike the straight-sided tower at Thanjavur, bend gently inward as they rise. In the sanctum Brihadeeswarar stands as a lingam about 13 ft tall on a base some 18 m round; priests have to build a plank platform around the base to perform the abhishekam. Periyanayaki, true to her name, is a 9.5 ft image. A large limestone Nandi sits on the ground about 200 m out, facing the sanctum.

The town is named for a conquest. Rajendra I, son of Rajaraja Chola, marched north through Karnataka, Andhra and Odisha into Bengal and defeated its Pala king. He made the beaten kings carry Ganges water south in pots, and it was poured into the temple well, which came to be called Cholagangam. Back home he called himself Gangaikonda Cholan, the conqueror of the Ganges. Thanjavur was no longer his seat: he built a new city here, shifted the court to it and, following his father's example, raised a great temple at its centre. The Chola empire was ruled from this city for roughly 250 years.

About fifty carved panels run round the sanctum walls. Nataraja, Saraswati and the Chandesha Anugraha murti stand out, and so does a rare portrait of the builder: Shiva, with Parvati beside him, lowers a victory garland onto a small seated Rajendra. The nine planetary deities share a single stone carved as a lotus, a design found nowhere else. Saraswati and Lakshmi are shown in meditation and are worshipped as Gnana Saraswati and Gnana Lakshmi. The bronzes of Bhogasakti and Subrahmanya rank among the finest Chola metalwork. The builders set things so that daytime sun striking the Nandi is reflected onto the lingam, which shows clearly when the sanctum lamps are put out, and a moonstone (chandrakanta) under the lingam keeps it cool in summer and mild in winter. The temple well, the Simha Kinaru, is the same well that received the Ganges water; only the lion figure at its mouth is a 19th-century addition.

Poems such as the Muvar Ula and the Kalingathuparani celebrate the city. Its palace, its other temples and its streets were all lost in the 13th and 14th centuries, and why this one temple survived is still an open question. Earth mounds and broken pillar bases in the fields nearby are what remain of the old capital.

An inscription of 1023 CE is the first to mention Rajendra's Ganges campaign, and one of 1029 is the first to name the city. The temple was finished in 1035, the twentieth year of his reign, which is also the date of its first recorded gift. Its vimanam is about 55 m high, roughly 3 m short of Thanjavur's, kept lower as a mark of respect for his father's temple. Most Chola kings after Rajendra were crowned here. The twenty or so inscriptions in the temple record gifts from later Cholas, Pandyas and Vijayanagara rulers; none is Rajendra's own. The city began to fall apart in the late 13th century. Conservation work was carried out under British rule in the 19th century, and excavations nearby have since exposed palace and fort-wall remains. The Archaeological Survey of India now looks after it as a protected monument. In 2004 it joined the Thanjavur and Darasuram temples on UNESCO's list as one of the Great Living Chola Temples, and in July 2014 the thousandth year of Rajendra's coronation was marked here over two days.

Prayers here are mostly made to Durga: for a marriage, for a child, for a promotion or a job transfer, with an archanai offered at her shrine. As a vow fulfilled, devotees drape Brihadeeswarar in a 25 m veshti with a 14 ft garland, and the goddess in a nine-yard sari. This is devotional custom, not a promise of any result.