The Chola dynasty: the kings, the temples and the bronzes of South India

The Cholas were Tamil kings who ruled South India for hundreds of years. They built great temples and paid for bronze statues that museums in New York and Amsterdam now hold. One of the 15 portrait styles on this site, the Chola Warrior, takes its name from them. This guide covers who the Cholas were, their two best-known kings, the great temple at Thanjavur and the Chola bronzes.

Who were the Cholas, and where did they rule?

The Cholas came from the valley of the Kaveri River, in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu. Encyclopaedia Britannica calls them rulers "of unknown antiquity": nobody knows when the family began, and it is older than the early Sangam poems of Tamil literature. Their oldest capital was Uraiyur, the city now called Tiruchchirappalli. Britannica also gives the other spelling of the name, Cola.

The Cholas who built an empire came later. NCERT, India's national school textbook body, tells the story in its Class 7 history book. A small ruling family, the Muttaraiyar, held the Kaveri delta and served the Pallava kings of Kanchipuram. In the middle of the ninth century Vijayalaya, from the old Chola family of Uraiyur, took the delta from them. He built the town of Thanjavur and a temple there to the goddess Nishumbhasudini.

The kings after him took the Pandya lands to the south and the Pallava lands to the north. UNESCO says these Cholas ruled from Thanjavur and the land around it for four and a half centuries.

NCERT says many Chola achievements were made possible by new developments in farming. The Kaveri splits into many small channels before it reaches the Bay of Bengal. These channels leave fertile soil on their banks, and their water helps crops grow, especially rice. Farmers built embankments against floods, dug canals and wells, and made large tanks, which are man-made ponds, to hold rainwater. Villages of farmers were called ur, and groups of villages formed a larger unit called a nadu. The village council and the nadu settled disputes and collected taxes. Chola inscriptions, NCERT adds, use more than 400 different words for kinds of tax.

Rajaraja I and Rajendra I

NCERT calls Rajaraja I the most powerful Chola ruler. He became king in 985. According to Britannica, he had conquered Kerala and taken northern Sri Lanka by 996, and by 1014 he held the Lakshadweep and Maldive islands as well. With the wealth from these wars he built the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur. NCERT says he also reorganised how the empire was run.

His son Rajendra I ruled until 1044 and went further. Britannica lists his campaigns: he completed the conquest of Sri Lanka, put his own son on the throne at Madurai, and in 1023 sent an army north as far as the Ganges River. That army brought Ganges water back to his new capital, Gangaikondacholapuram. He also conquered parts of the Malay Peninsula and the islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Several of these campaigns crossed the sea. NCERT says he built up a navy for his expeditions to the Ganga valley, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The Smithsonian describes the Cholas as a strong naval power that also kept up trade and diplomatic contact with China and Southeast Asia.

The Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur

UNESCO calls the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur the greatest achievement of the Chola architects. You will see its name spelled several ways: Brihadisvara (UNESCO), Brihadishvara (Britannica), and Brihadeeswarar or Brihadeshwara in everyday use. Inscriptions of the time call it Dakshina Meru.

Rajaraja I began the work in 1003 or 1004 and dedicated the temple himself in 1009 or 1010. Its main feature is the vimana, the tall tower that rises over the inner room holding the image of the god. At Thanjavur the vimana stands 59.82 metres high, with 13 levels and an eight-sided top. Inside, a walkway runs all the way around the inner room. Large paintings cover the temple walls. On the walls around the inner room, sculptors carved 81 of the 108 karanas, a set of 108 dance poses, in the Bharatanatyam style.

The temple joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987. In 2004 UNESCO added two more Chola temples, and the three together are now called the Great Living Chola Temples:

Temple	Place	Built by	Tower height (UNESCO)
Brihadisvara	Thanjavur	Rajaraja I	59.82 m
Brihadisvara	Gangaikondacholapuram	Rajendra I, finished in 1035	53 m
Airavatesvara	Darasuram	Rajaraja II	24 m

UNESCO calls them living temples because the worship that began in them over a thousand years ago still goes on daily, weekly and yearly. The Archaeological Survey of India looks after all three. The fort walls around the Thanjavur temple and the Sivaganga Tank beside it came later: UNESCO says the Nayaks of Tanjore built them in the 16th century.

Chola bronzes

NCERT says bronze making was the most distinctive craft tied to Chola temples, and that Chola bronze images "are considered amongst the finest in the world". Most show gods, and some show devotees.

Britannica says South Indian bronzes were made in large numbers from the 8th to the 16th century, mostly in the Thanjavur and Tiruchchirappalli districts. They were made by lost-wax casting. The Smithsonian describes the method: the artist models the figure in wax, with every detail, and the wax model is then cast in bronze. Britannica adds that the sculptors worked on each figure again after casting, so the images are "carved" as well as "modelled".

The bronzes were made for worship. The Smithsonian explains that every Chola temple has a fixed image of its main god at the centre, while the bronzes can be moved. From Chola times to today, it says, the bronzes are dressed and decorated, then carried out to meet worshippers at outdoor festivals. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds a Shiva Nataraja from the 12th century, 153 cm tall and weighing 255 kg. Its base has rings for carrying poles, so bearers could lift it in a procession.

Nataraja means "King of Dancers", according to the Rijksmuseum. A Nataraja shows Shiva dancing inside a ring of fire. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a Nataraja from the 11th century, 68.3 cm tall. The Met explains that the form appeared in sculpture as early as the fifth century, and that its famous present form developed under the Cholas. In 2002 and 2003 the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington showed 70 Chola bronzes together, which it described as the first exhibition in the United States given only to Chola temple bronzes.

The Chola Warrior portrait style

Purrealism has a Chola Warrior portrait style, one of nine styles drawn from Indian royal courts. The gallery has no finished Chola Warrior portrait yet. You can choose the style for your dog or cat in the portrait studio.

The Rajput Warrior, another warrior style, has a finished example in the gallery, and our guide to Rajput painting explains the courts behind it. The Maratha King style has its own history guide, Shivaji and the Maratha kings. For help choosing across all 15 styles, read how to choose a royal portrait style.

How the Chola dynasty ended

Britannica traces the wars that followed Rajendra I. His successor Rajadhiraja was killed in 1054 at the Battle of Koppam, fighting the Chalukya kings of the Deccan. Kulottunga I, who ruled from 1070 to 1122, gave up the Deccan and worked on uniting the east coast. By the 1160s Sri Lanka had won back its independence.

From 1216 the Hoysala kings took land in the Chola country. Local lords who had served the Cholas broke away, and kings from the north joined the fighting. In 1257 the Pandya kings conquered the Chola country, and Britannica gives 1279 as the year the Chola dynasty ended. The three Chola temples at Thanjavur, Gangaikondacholapuram and Darasuram still hold daily worship, UNESCO says.