Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India
A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster
Episode 23: The Chola Empire, Part II

With Om Puri as Raja Raja Chola, Devendra Malhotra as Ishanashiva, Sunila Pradhan as Mahadevi Lalit Tiwari as Architect, Shantanu Chaparia as Tirumala, Mahendra Raghuvanshi as Kirukadikilan, Preeta Mathur as Umadevi, Murari Sharma as Singer, and Vijay Chibbar and Mohan Kant as the Traders. Playback by S.R. Venkatesh, Rajan Easwaran, Sharad Jambhekar, jolly Mukherjee, Hemant Kulkarni, V. Saraswathi, and T. Raghu.

In order to employ the best architect the royal messenger reaches a remote village where the designated architect is preoccupied with a village temple. He is almost forced to abandon his project and come to the Chola king along with his sculptor assistant. Fortunately, later, he is allowed to revert to his village for one year to complete the work there as preparations here would take that much time. Meanwhile, the encounter between Raja Raja and ‘Rajmata’ hurtles to a showdown as the king reveals his plan to build the grandest of all temples in his own name. Raja Raja is even prepared to fight against the fledgling Chalukya king Satyashreya if a demand for a large Shiva Linga (phallus) from the Narmada riverbed is not met.

The architectural plan models the Universe with sanctum sanctorum as the Mount Meru and icons of the Gods for facing appropriate directions. The temple would be surrounded by walls within which there would be priestly abodes and outside the walls would rise a brand new city of traders and common men. Soon arrives the mammoth Shiva Linga, the like of which has seldom been seen. On hearing the enchanting Bhajan on Shiva of Chidambaram temple being sung in a procession, the king ordains those talented musicians to be brought here.

Any religious procession outside would use a bronze icon of Shiva with Nadaswaram accompaniment while the stone icon would reside inside the temple. A minor affair of heart between the young sculptor and the royal princess is settled short of capital punishment for the former, with due regard to his talent. So, the Brihadisvara temple comes up as one of the loftiest in India. The son Raja Rajendra Chola builds a similar temple in nearby Gangaikunda Cholapuram. He dies in 1044 AD and the empire stutters to fall.

Nehru pauses here to note that in the 1000 years since the lst century AD, wave after wave of Indian colonists spread east and southeast to reach Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), Malaya, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Siam (Thailand), Cambodia and IndoChina. Some of them managed to reach Formosa (Taiwan), Philippines and Celebes. What led to these extraordinary expeditions across the perilous seas? One cardinal feature of these adventures must have been trade and commerce as a supreme passion in India followed by spread of Indian civilisation and culture overseas .

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