The Colas c9.10

c9.10

From the tenth century A.D., the period of Cōḷa rule was a great epoch in the building of structural stone temples. The walls of the new temples, their pillars and their plinths were usually covered with inscriptions in course of time. The great temple of Rājarājēśvara in Tanjore furnishes, in this respect, only a leading example of a practice very common at the time. We are expressly told¹⁶ that before older structures were pulled down for rebuilding a shrine, the inscriptions on the walls were, in many cases, copied out in books and re-engraved later on the walls of the new structure. Even brick temples had sometimes inscriptions engraved on their walls.¹⁷ We shall never know the extent of the damage inflicted in recent years by the ignorant piety of renovators of ancient shrines. Government have been unduly slack in stopping such damage; they have even refused to lay down a procedure to be followed by renovators which would have minimised the extent of the damage.¹⁸ Sometimes inscriptions are found engraved on rocks and boulders not forming parts of temples, but they are the exception.