Dynastic History | Gangaikonda Cholapuram — A Capital That Left Only Its Temple

Rajendra I moved the Chola capital here and named the place for the campaign that justified it: Gangaikonda Cholapuram, the city of the Chola who took the Ganges. Founding dates differ. S. Vasanthi's excavation account puts it about 1020, other summaries at about 1025; the temple itself was finished in 1035, the figure both UNESCO and Vidya Dehejia give. Chola-era records state that defeated rulers were required to send pots of Ganges water to be poured into the temple's well.

The temple is what is left. The city had two concentric brick fortifications, traceable now as a mound. The palace stood on a rise at Utkottai about 1.5 km away, known locally as Maligaimedu: burnt brick, ceilings of small flat tiles set in fine lime mortar, pillars of polished wood on granite bases, a few of which survive. R. Nagaswamy's 1970 report for the state archaeology department describes a passage running underground toward the temple's inner enclosure. Excavations by the Tamil Nadu Department of Archaeology recovered bone and ivory objects, quartz beads, shell bangle fragments, and Chinese celadon and porcelain sherds — eleventh- and twelfth-century trade, in pieces.

Stone was for the god and brick for the king, which is much of the explanation: Vasanthi notes that people living there have long taken the old bricks for their own building. Why the rest of the city went is not settled. She suggests the Pandyas, who defeated the Cholas late in the thirteenth century, may have razed it; against that reading stands the survival of the main temple and roughly twenty later Chola, Pandya and Vijayanagara inscriptions recording grants to it. The temple was reconsecrated in 2017 with a new flagstaff.

📸 Cover: The vimana and south wall of the temple, L Ram Vidya Sagar, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons