Art of the Imperial Cholas.

• Author: Dohanian, Diran Kavork

This slim volume examines selected instances of the imperial patronage of Hindu temples, their buildings and sculptured imagery, in the domains of the Cholas in south India, dating from the late 10th century until ca. A.D. 1212. It is not a study of the art and culture of the imperial Cholas, generally speaking, although some commentary on the art of earlier periods is included. Originally a sequence of lectures given during the Fall season of 1987 at the Asia Society, New York City, the book retains characteristics of the lecture format of which it may be regarded as a fixed record. The focus of the book is on the patronage of three benefactors: two sovereigns and a royal widow of the lineage of Vijayalaya and, by way of counterpoint and extension, that of three rulers in the lineage of the Kulottunga I, the Eastern Calukya prince who acceded to the throne of the Colamandalam in 1070.

The focal center of the author's discourse is provided in the magnificent temples, dedicated to Siva, raised by Cola Rajaraja and his son, Rajendra, in their imperial cities, Tanjore and Gangaikondacolapuram, respectively. The Rajarajesgvaram, in Tanjore, was raised to celebrate the Chola imperium as shaped by the ruler's military exploits, as well as his assumption of the title Rajaraja. Begun around 1003/4, completed after 1014, and built on a grandiose scale without precedent in the Colamandalam, its impact was stunning and, therefore, effective as both political statement and an expression of intense religious devotion. His successor, Rajendra, built a new capital city, ultimately named Gangaikondacolapuram and, for it, a splendid temple, rivalling his father's at Tanjore, of which it remains an evolved form. Surviving wall-paintings and metal images, produced for these temples and others, are reviewed in an effort to reconstruct the original splendor of Chola imperial shrines.

Bracketing this commentary are a loosely stitched-together account of the beneficence of a royal widow, Sembiyan Mahadevi in the last decades of the 10th century and a rehearsal of the extensive shrines raised by later Chola rulers and of the portable imagery offered to them. Queen Sembiyan's patronage, both as a woman and as a widow, is remarkable but no consideration is...