The Chola capital
Around 850 a chief named Vijayalaya took Thanjavur from the Muttaraiyar, local lords who had held it under the Pallavas, and his descendants built the Chola empire from it. The city became the dynasty's capital and its ritual centre.
Rajaraja I (r. 985–1014) built the temple that made Thanjavur famous, the Rajarajeshvaram, now known as the Brihadishvara. It was consecrated in 1010. Its vimana, the tower over the sanctum, rises about sixty-six metres, far taller than any earlier Indian temple, and is capped by a huge stone dome. The walls of the inner passage carry Chola paintings, discovered in the 1930s under later Nayaka work. Rajaraja's inscriptions on the base record the gifts of land, gold and jewels made to the temple, the villages that supplied it, and the names of the hundreds of dancers, musicians and servants attached to it, making them one of the richest records of a medieval Indian institution.
Rajaraja's son Rajendra I moved the capital to a new city, Gangaikondacholapuram, around 1025, after his northern campaign to the Ganges. Thanjavur remained an important city but no longer the seat of government.
Nayakas and Marathas
After the Pandya revival and the Vijayanagara conquest, Thanjavur was given to a line of Nayaka governors from the 1530s. Their rule, especially under Raghunatha Nayaka (r. c. 1600–1634), was a time of rich court culture in Telugu and Sanskrit. In 1673 the kingdom fell to the Nayakas of Madurai, and in 1676 Venkoji, half-brother of Shivaji and a general of Bijapur, took Thanjavur and founded a Maratha dynasty there.
The Maratha kings ruled until 1855. Serfoji II (r. 1798–1832), educated by the Danish missionary Christian Friedrich Schwartz, built up the Saraswati Mahal library, with its manuscripts in Sanskrit, Tamil, Marathi and European languages, and set up a printing press at his court. From 1799 his power was nominal, and when his son Shivaji II died without a male heir in 1855 the British annexed the kingdom.
The arts
Thanjavur and the delta around it were the heart of Carnatic music. The three composers venerated as its trinity, Tyagaraja, Muttuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, were all born in Thanjavur district in the later eighteenth century. The city gave its name to a style of painting with gold leaf and inset stones, and to the bronze casting that continues the Chola tradition. Bharatanatyam took much of its modern form from the repertoire codified by four brothers of the Thanjavur court in the early nineteenth century.
Further reading
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
- Dehejia, Vidya. Art of the Imperial Cholas. Columbia University Press, 1990
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
See also
- Chola Empire — The Chola Empire ruled the Tamil country from 848 to 1279, at its height controlling southern India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, and produced the Bṛhadīśvara temple and the finest bronze sculpture made anywhere in the world.
- Nayaks of Thanjavur — The Nayaks of Thanjavur ruled the Kaveri delta from 1532 to 1673, a Telugu-speaking dynasty in the Tamil country whose court was a centre of literature and music.
- Early Cholas — The early Cholas were one of the three crowned dynasties of the Tamil country in the Sangam age, ruling the Kaveri delta from Uraiyūr and the port of Puhār, and are known chiefly from Tamil poetry rather than from inscriptions.
- Hindu temple architecture — The architectural tradition of Hindu temple building on the Indian subcontinent, spanning the Nagara style of the north, the Dravida style of the south, and the hybrid Vesara style of the Deccan, all grounded in the sacred geometry of the Vastu Purusha Mandala.
- Pandya dynasty — The Pandya dynasty was an ancient Tamil dynasty centered on Madurai in southern Tamil Nadu, with a documented history running from the Sangam period in the 3rd century BCE to its overthrow by Delhi Sultanate forces in the early 14th century CE.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.