My parents and I went on week-long trip into the heartland of Tamilnadu in Southern India a few years ago on a ‘Journey2Roots’ trip. During our travels through the villages where my dad, my maternal grandfather and a great uncle had grown up, we took a detour to the ancient city of Thanjavur, to visit the stunning Brahadeesvarar Temple, popularly known as the Big Temple.

Thanjavur, also known by it’s anglicised name Tanjore was the seat of the Chola kingdom and gained popularity between the 11th and 14th century. The Chola kings were instrumental in turning Thanjavur into a hub of arts, culture and learning.

The Big Temple (Periya Kovil in Tamil) is a UNESCO world heritage site and certainly one of India’s most prized architectural structures.

In 2010, the temple celebrated a millennium. Built by King Arulmozhi Varman popularly known as Raja Raja Chola I in the 11th century AD, it has been improved upon and added to over the years. Typically Temples in Southern India are colourful with the distinct multi-hued ‘gopuram‘, but this mammoth structure is built only with granite and retains its natural colouring, faded only by the passage of centuries. 

The Brahadeesvarar Temple is the first temple in the world to be made completely from granite. What’s fascinating is granite is not found anywhere near Thanjavur. The absence of a granite quarry within a 100km radius of the temple must have required logistics of epic proportions in order to get the stones to the construction site. It is still not known from where, or how the massive blocks of granite were brought.

Inscriptions detailing the story of the temple, written in ancient Tamil of the Chola kingdom are found on slabs of carved granite stones all over the temple.

An important highlight of the temple is the statue of the massive Nandi (sacred bull) carved from a single stone that weighs about 20 tonnes! The statue is 13 feet high and 16 feet long.

The walls of the temple complex are adorned by beautiful paintings belonging to the Chola and Nayak period.

Just walking around in the temple complex, taking in the history and the beauty of the sculptures and carvings, knowing that people have been coming here for 1000 years, is a breathtaking experience. 

The intricate carvings, the sheer magnitude of the structure, the vast temple complex and its stunning beauty are truly unparalleled.

As my cousin most appropriately put it – The leaning tower of Pisa, which is just a slanty tower due to a building defect, is hailed as one of the wonders of the modern world, while here is a 1000-year-old architectural marvel that far surpasses any slanty building!