The Colas c33.21

c33.21

Besides the collection and conservation of sacred literature, the new life in religion manifested itself in the erection of stone temples, great and small, in all the holy places hallowed by association with the lives of the *āḻvārs* and *nāyanārs* of the earlier age. As a religious institution, the South Indian Temple reaches back to a remote antiquity, and the existence of numerous temples (*kōṭṭams*) of Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jain deities is fully attested by the Śaṅgam literature. The early temples were structures of brick and mortar, or, under the Pallavas, carved out of solid blocks of granite, rock-cut 'cave temples.'²⁸ The art of erecting structural temples of stone was not unknown, and the Kailāsanātha temple at Kāñcīpuram and the shore temple at Mahābalipuram show the rapid advance in architectural achievement in the two centuries after Mahēndravarman, the Vicitra-citta who marvelled at his own feat in having brought into existence a temple without metal, timber or brick.²⁹ That stone temples were, however, still rare in the Cōḷa country in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that the kings of the Vijayālaya line led the way in multiplying their number is fully borne out by contemporary inscriptions. The Anbil plates state that the chief glory of the rule of Āditya I was that he covered the banks of the Kāvērī, along its whole course from the mountain to the sea, with a number of lofty and impregnable temples built of stone and dedicated to Śiva. The inscriptions of the reign of Parāntaka I show that Āditya's work was continued by his successor who is reputed to have covered with gold the roof of the Cidambaram temple. Besides the kings, some of their relatives and officials stand out prominent among the leaders in this widespread movement. Tirukkarṟaḷi-piccan (Piccan of the sacred stone temple) of whom there is still a sculpture in Tiruvāḍutuṟai³⁰ was one of them and he was in the service of Parāntaka I. Even the Rāṣṭrakūṭa invader, Kṛṣṇa III, erected several temples in the land newly conquered by him, one of them being the Kālapriya at Kāvēripākkam.³¹ Śembiyan-mahādēvi, the queen of Gaṇḍarāditya and mother of Uttama Cōḷa, was widowed early in life and lived on for many years thereafter. Hers was a life of religious devotion, and possibly the crime by which her son cleared his way to the throne added poignancy to her piety. In any case, she used all her great influence and resources throughout her son's reign and far into that of his successor Rājarāja I for the construction and the very liberal endowment of an unusually large number of temples.³² The village Śembiyan-mahādēvi was altogether her foundation and the stone temple dedicated to Candramauḷīśvara at Tiruvakkarai in South Arcot, built about A.D. 1001, was among the latest foundations of her life. Either as renovating old structures or founding new ones, or, more rarely, as commemorative monuments of a sepulchral character, the construction of stone temples continued throughout the Cōḷa period and, in fact, has gone on till our own times. The most conspicuous monuments of the early eleventh century, and in some ways the finest of all South Indian temples, were those of Tanjore and of Gaṅgaikoṇḍa-cōḷpuram.