The Brhadishwara temple is in Tanjaur, which is a little down south from Chennai. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means across the world, in all the monuments it has seen as one of the most important. There are many many mysteries around it, and there are many false stories as well that the top is 80 tons and they built a plank across the village, all of that is not true, but there are some really important secrets on the Brhadishwara temple that you need to know. My name is Pradip and I love the Chola period in terms of history. Listen to me as I tell you a little bit more about the Brhadishwara temple. The Brhadishwara temple is a stands in an area of 44 acres, and the height of the Brhadishwara temple is about 217 feet, and it was built by Rajaraja Chola who ruled in the 11th century in Tanjaur. This temple was built for Shiva and Rajaraja saw it as the most important building that he ever constructed in his life. Today there are a few other temples around it, but in those days it was just these two goperms or entranceways and then the massive temple and a small temple for Chandikeshwara on the side. There are many many important inscriptions in the temple. One of the inscriptions incidentally is on how he got two different trading or merchant communities come together and donate bananas to make uphams to the temple Ganesha. Even today we love our uphams in the south, maybe you had it yourself and it's very tasty to make an uphams with mashed bananas in it. And from this inscription we find that throughout his reign the price of bananas did not change. Another inscription that we have in the temple is about how he gave an entire village and all the income from that village was used to fund wonderful spices and free grinses that was mixed with the water that was used for the daily sacred bath of Shiva. But in the temple what we really need to understand is the architectural marvel of it. This was built at a time when there was no concrete, there were no earth moving equipment and yet they were able to move these massive chunks of granite which is one of the world's hardest and most densest stones from Pudukhota which was about at least a Tuchi in Pudukhota is about at least 100 kilometers away from Sanjavod. They were able to move those stones from there, bring it all the way over here and build the temple. The second thing that's remarkable about the temple is there is no binding material used when these stones come together. So unlike today you can't create a cement in those days they use no binding material. They had a male and female joint which means once stone would have a protrusion the other stone would have a hole they would both match with each other and using that friction and that support of each other the entire structure would stand. And what's even more remarkable is the I told you the main tower is about 215 feet high right. The entire tower inverse is completely hollow. So they they had the ability to place blocks of granite stone at a very precise angle so that they went up like this and at the end on the top to prevent the entire structure from collapsing downwards or outwards they put in about eight stones on the top the capstone or the Kalasa and that structure holds the entire tower together. Inside the main tower there are some beautiful 11th century wall murals and from these murals and there's a little bit of color that's still left over. From these we actually have an image of how Rajaraja look. He's a dusky brown color he's wearing very short dothi, bare body down the top and he is really luxurious beard and and moustache and he has his hair all bund up on the top in the back and we have a few viscines as well. There's another picture of where they are preparing wedding feast for Sundaramurthy Nainar was a very very important Shiva scene and in that you can see all the vessels and the rice and the vegetables and on the on the Pandar you can see a little band of cloth and on the cloth are block printed images of ducks or geese. So you get a sense of what kind of colors people used those days what kind of decorations that they use and we also have in one of those paintings an image of two security guards who wearing some kind of a stitched coat. So I hope you've learnt a little bit about the bradishura temple and you will go and have a look at it and enjoy the beauty that Rajaraja created in the time that he ruled in the 11th century.