History of a Monument That Failed to Be Added in Seven Wonders

Source: Pixabay

I can assure you that no People of Tamil Nadu are unaware of this great and greatest temple of Chozha’s history which is one of the mysterious architecture of Tamil Nadu.

Sorry, maybe you may not be aware of this wonderful creation or maybe you don’t even hear the name of this temple yet. Let me tell you briefly!

Raja Raja Chozhan

Source: Pixabay

Let's see about the king that built the temple first, He was one of the bravest and greatest emperors of the Chozha dynasty. He conquered many small kingdoms in Tamil Nadu and expanded the Chozha kingdom as far as Sri Lanka in the south, and Kalinga in the northeast.

He was popularly known as “Raja Raja Chozhan the great” this is the name he got after he became the king but even before he began ruling, People used to call him “Ponniyin Selvan” because of the incident that happened in his childhood.

When he was young he got pulled into the Ponni river and most people thought he was dead but he came back alive. People believed that the Ponni River gave him back alive, so popularly known as Ponniyin Selvan among everyone which means child of Ponni River. But his actual name given by his father is Arunmozhi Varman or Arulmozhi Varman.

He was born as the third child of king SundarChozhan, his two siblings are Adhithya Karigalan who is the elder child of both who is also well known for being a brave and toughest prince, and he is the one that should become king according to the rule, but unfortunately, he died.

Secondly “Kundhavai Pirattiyar”, the middle child of “Sundar Chozha” who is ultimately shown well intelligent by knowledge and highly knowledgeable about the politics that goes around the kingdom, plays the main role in guiding Arulmozhi in the correct path even after he became the king.

More than this, even after she married Vandhiyedhevan who is a well-trustable friend of both her elder and younger brothers, and later became the king of his Hometown. She refused to become the queen of his husband’s kingdom she kept her position as the princess of the Chozha empire itself. Arulmozhi became the king of the Chozha Empire after a huge chaos.

Reason to Build a Temple

Author “Balakumaran” in his novel “Udayar”, wrote a scenario where raja Chozhan confesses his reason to build the temple in the capital of his kingdom. Here is the summary of that scene in the novel:

“Since Arunmozhi was highly obsessed with the lord Shiva and he was a great devotee of his, He wants to build such a temple to dedicate to lord Shiva which should make the upcoming generation wonder about how could even such an architecture is possible to build?”.

“He does not want his future generation to remember his capital only as a simple place where the great Chozha was ruled but as a place where god lived, a place where a king built a great temple which none other could build.”“It should not only be the temple that just stays as the pride of Raja Raja or the Chozha dynasty but also the future generations to realize how connected their ancestors are with the gods, How much love we had for them, and the love that god shown to us”.!

The Big Temple

The name of the temple is “Brihadeeswarar Temple” which is also known as Big Temple but the actual name given by Raja Rajan is “RajaRajeshwaram” which means “The temple of the god of raja raja” later it changed and being called Brihadheeswara or Big Temple.

This temple was constructed during the period of AD 985-1014 and completed around 1010 AD. It is one of the greatest and best examples of how amazing the architecture of Tamil civilization is.

The Construction Work

From the beginning, I kept on mentioning that, this temple is so special right? Do you know why??

We are in 2023 now and we know well about the components which are necessary to construct a strong and long-lasting building, but it was almost 1000 years back, can you imagine the people from 1000 years back built a massive building only with the help of rocks but no binding agent like soil cement or any other components that need to be used?

It’s interesting, right? The great Brihadheeswara temple of Thanjur was built without any bending components like soil or cement but only with the rocks, those rocks are in the form of interlocking to each other.

Even after 1000 years, after facing many natural disasters The temple remains still strong and stands as a monument. And also during the British period, not even a single stone could be destroyed by their advanced weapons. All these are because of the brilliant architectural idea of the old Tamil civilization.

Uniqueness

The dome of Brihadheeswara temple! This weighs around 80 tons and is made of granite. It’s still a mystery how such a massive weighted granite stone is supported by the temple structure. And also it was at a period of no advanced technologies right… then how did they bring such a massive weighted stone to the top of the building without any advanced tools or technologies?

 

The main uniqueness of the temple is, you can see all over India the gates of the temple will be massive and the tower of the simple will be small whereas here you could see the gates of the Brihadheeswara temples are small but the tower of the temple is extremely high.­­

The Final Shot

We, people, are searching for wonder all over the world, but we failed to look at our land. Before flying away, look at the land in which you live. It holds millions of mysteries and trillions of pride. Every country, every state, and every continent has its pride and own treasures. So first find ours before looking at others!

Written By - Anas Ahamed

Edited By - Riya Dabas