If you have not yet been to the Brihadishvara Temple at Thanjavur, we would very strongly recommend a visit at the soonest to see one of India’s most magnificent temples. If you go on a moonlight night, the temple looks even more majestic. And if you can pull strings and see the 1500-year old paintings which surround the sanctum sanctorum, you will get a visual representation of why the Cholas rival the Mughals as India’s richest & mightiest rulers. Before visit Thanjavur, you might want to read Anirudh Kanisetti’s ‘Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire’. Mr Kanisetti writes in The Print about the opulence of the Chola court: “The Brihadishvara Temple at Thanjavur is still one of the most stupendous monuments ever built in India. While often seen primarily as a religious monument, its inscriptions also reveal a Chola court of spectacular opulence, capable of gifting literal tonnes of gold and silver, thousands of animals, and tens of thousands of pearls. Sometimes we hand-wave the question of how medieval Indian kings obtained such vast riches. But in the figure of Rajaraja Chola – perhaps the most remarkable ruler of the period – we have some interesting, and counterintuitive, answers.”
So how was Rajaraja Chola able to command such riches? Mr Kanisetti’s writing highlights the drivers of Chola success: “Military daring; alliances with merchants, smart public relations, and administrative genius. But more than anything else, it was his boundless imagination—his ability to break with the old and create new institutions.”
Mr Kanisetti outlines Rajaraja’s conquests: “At his accession, the upper Tamil plain finally possessed the mix of factors – internal cohesion and external disarray – to turn the tables on all its neighbours. And this Rajaraja did with violent efficiency, leading expeditions to the Malabar Coast, Sri Lanka, and southern Karnataka.
What really sets Rajaraja apart is what he did after these expeditions. Most medieval Indian kings would simply demand tribute, vassalise foreign rulers, and return home. It was just too difficult, logistically, to administer conquered territory. But Rajaraja broke the mould: in south Karnataka, he renamed Talakkad, an old regional centre, “Rajaraja-puram”—Rajaraja City; in Lanka, after taking control of the town of Polonnaruwa, he renamed it “Jananathapuram”, People’s Leader City. These would hereafter serve as Chola centres. Rajaraja was able to do this with confidence because he had the support of Tamil merchant assemblies, who migrated to both regions accompanied by professional mercenaries.”
We then learn about how Rajaraja creates win-win relationships with the Tamil business community in an echo of how pro-capitalist governments would work a millennium later: “It was Tamil merchants who enabled the Chola kingdom to become a Chola Empire. In fact, according to the Culavamsa, a Sri Lankan chronicle, it was a Tamil horse merchant who tipped Rajaraja off about the island’s political situation, enabling the Chola conquest. And Rajaraja rewarded the merchant assemblies appropriately: as historian Meera Abraham argues in Two Medieval Merchant Guilds of South India, inscriptions suggest they took over pearl fisheries on Lanka’s north shore right after.
But paralleling this was Rajaraja’s own remarkable administrative prowess. He amplified, by several degrees, the temple patronage policy of his grand-aunt, Sembiyan Mahadevi. After every war, he gifted animals, gold, and jewels at strategically-chosen sacred sites. These gifts were accompanied by eulogies to his martial prowess – turning them, essentially, into medieval political ‘advertisements’. This effectively broadcast his charisma into the Tamil countryside, winning over subjects, recruits and administrators. From the 990s onwards, Rajaraja’s court set up new administrative divisions – all bearing his titles, such as Keralantaka-Valanadu (roughly ‘Kerala-Destroyer Prosperity District’). This created easily the deepest taxation system in all of medieval South Asia.”
All of this created wealth unmatched by any other king or kingdom of that era. Effectively, Rajaraja Chola created what looks like the first corporate empire in the world “Here are the overall numbers, as calculated by historian SR Balasubrahmanyam in Middle Chola Temples: Rajaraja I to Kulottunga I. Rajaraja alone gifted 38,604 gold coins. This was more than what most European courts at the time could muster. Then there are the precious corals, pearls and jewels—about 85 in total—that Rajaraja’s inscriptions declare were seized from the rival Pandya and Chera dynasties. These were valued at 8,462 coins. Then 155 silver items, similarly seized from the Cheras and Pandyas, worth 48,400 gold coins.
Adding all of these up, Rajaraja alone gave away gifts worth 95,466 gold coins: several tonnes of the precious metal. Rajaraja’s sister and queens also made gifts of bronze idols, adorned with tens of thousands of Lankan pearls. There is no earlier indication that these ladies had large treasuries of their own; this suggests that their fortunes stemmed from Rajaraja himself. And the ultimate source of this was the seized treasuries of Rajaraja’s political rivals.
This, as it were, is merely the tip of the temple-spire. The temple received ghee from 1,623 cows, 2,563 ewes, and 40 buffaloes—about 40 per cent of which were gifted by Rajaraja. Over 5,000 tonnes of rice were brought in annually, mostly from nearby villages but also from conquered territory. Rajaraja’s officers and army regiments also made gifts to the temple, and its staff came from across Chola territories, turning it into a political centre for the imperial elite. But all these endowments were not just intended to conduct rituals: like his uncle Uttama, Rajaraja was also aware of the temple’s potential as an economic engine. Its animals were gifted to shepherds, especially in his kingdom’s drier regions; in return, the shepherds were to send the temple constant gifts of ghee for its lamps. Gold coins were loaned to Brahmin assemblies in the still-wild lower Kaveri delta, allowing them to clear forests and set up irrigation in return for a neat 12.5 per cent annual interest.”
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