State, Society and Temple in Early Medieval South India: A Historiographical Critique

Let me, first of all thank the Executive Committee members of the Tamil Nadu History Congress for having elected me to preside over the historiography section of its annual conference. I deem it a great honor to accept this task as medieval history of South India has emerged as one of the most important and intellectually vibrant fields of medieval research. I was initiated into the field of medieval South Indian history by Professor Burton Stein at the University of Hawaii more than 3 decades back and this Presidential Address gives me an opportunity to reflect upon the changes that have taken place in the theory and practice of medieval history of Peninsular India. As a historian, my researches have focused on Vijaynagara history, but have chosen to speak on the historiography of the Cholas for two reasons. First, a critical understanding of the Chola period is of vital importance in order to understand the contours of social and economic change during the Vijayanagara and subsequent periods. Second, many of the concerns in the field of medieval history such as the nature of power relations within the structure of the state, role of kinship in the construction of political relations, land and landed groups in the agrarian order, and the growth of urban centers and trading networks across India and the Indian Ocean region which dominate the historiography of medieval India, were first debated and discussed in the specific context of South India.



Starting with the publication of the Cholas by Nilakanta Sastri in 1955 till 1980 when Burton Stein published his Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India the study of medieval history was dominated by questions relating to state formation and the characterization of the medieval state. Since then the agenda of historians has become more eclectic with other issues such as the land tenure, community and caste formation, social groups and their mutual interactions, historical geography, and craft production taking the centre stage. Artisans such as the weavers, goldsmiths, carpenters, and peasant groups like the nattar and uravar are all being studied in order to determine the main contours of social change during the medieval period. Vijaya Ramaswamy’s Textiles and Weavers in Medieval South India made a very credible start when she demonstrated that the increase in the rate and pace of temple patronage by weavers starting from the middle of the 13th century presupposed an upward economic and social mobility.

The conceptual frame work within which some of the recent work is being written is worthy of attention: social history and its manifestation in the realm of politics especially within the rarefied arena of temple patronage is seen form the standpoint that power does not reside in any one particular locus or institution but is defused throughout society. Such a perspective enables the historians to study the state in the medieval period not as an institution standing outside of society, but rather as a field within which multiple claims of power and hierarchy is negotiated

In the new work that has emerged over the last two decades new questions and with them new methods of studying the past have appeared. The debate between Sanjay Subrahramanyan and Noboru Karashima over the use of the Mackenzie Manuscripts as a source for the reconstruction of the medieval past is just one of several interesting issues confronting the historian. Should medieval texts, be they written on stone, copper plates or the more conventional literary works be treated as repositories of facts that yield their unmediated truth to the interrogation of the historian or should they be viewed as constructs embodying the perceptions, sensibilities and of course, the distortions of class, power relations and social aspirations. The Satakam literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century though rich in historical detail is often inflected with the social realities of the time. David Shulman in his excellent, but unfortunately neglected King and Clown in South India Myth and Poetry has shown that medieval religious Tamil texts inclusive of a wide range of genres yield insight into the nature and purpose of warfare and state sponsored violence in the medieval period. Thus, Jayankondar in his Kalingatthuparani, argues David Shulman provides a “profoundly un innocent” view of warfare in which, like the inherently unstable and dynamic “segmentary state” of Burton Stein, Shulman to sees Chola warfare as a “symbolic activity in which the unwieldy and disharmonious fragments of the kingdom combine in a moment of institutionalized breakdown and release”. In fact the very similarity between the anthologies of war in the puram genre of poetry and its echoes in the parani poems like the one we have mentioned raises serious questions about the survival of historical memory well into the early medieval period and thereby suggesting new venues of research for the redaction of the early heroic poetry. This point can be investigated further as Jayankondar begins with a description of the palai which is said to have been inhabited by a fierce goddess, perhaps the Korravai of the early period but now in the iconographic form of Durga, and the ensuing feast provided by the blood and gore of battle. Therefore a study of Chola kingship keeping both the dated literature and the inscriptions, particularly the copper plate records provide us valuable insight into the nature of Chola kingship and its practice in medieval South India.


An interesting avenue of investigation into the medieval past has been ushered in by Daud Ali who in recent years has emerged as a critique of existing interpretations. Taking his cue from Hayden White, La Capra, and to an extent Edward Said, Daud Ali has studied medieval Chola copper plate records as a variety or trope of historiography.

Rather than seeing such records only as unmediated facts that are available to the historian in a non problematic manner, Ali states that the construction and rhetorical apparatus of Chola Copper Plate inscriptions reveal a concern with the past and its representation in a form that appropriates the puranic genre in order to fashion an image of the past and this practice is consistent with modern understandings of historical texts being inflected with the concerns of the present.


Thus by the analyzing the Triuvalankadu Copper Plate Inscription issued in the 6th regnal year of Rajendra I, Daud Ali shows that such documents while encapsulating a notion of history also served to legitimize the claims of Rajendra I to the Chola throne, especially in view of the recent past of the Chola lineage. The bi-lingual nature of the record in that it was composed in both Tamil and Sanskrit serves to locate the kept pace with the kavya modes of political expression as suggested by Sheldon Pollock in his masterpiece Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Sheldon Pollock recognizes the significance and importance of Rajaraja I’s intervention in the codification of the Tevaram in the following manner: “In the eleventh century under the aegis Chola inscriptional firmly with the “Sanskrit Cosmopolis” in which the vernacular of Rajaraja Chola the Bhakti poems of the Thevaram were said to have been assembled-- after having being discovered in the great temple at Chidambaram—and were incorporated in the newly formalized Temple liturgies” (Pollock 2006: p. 383).

The Royal Temple – Brihadesvara .-- constructed by Rajaraja-I in his 25th regnal year has challenged the combined ingenuity of historians, epigraphists and interpreters of religious texts and ritual manuals. It is not difficult to see the reasons for the unending publicity which this particular monument evokes.

Its very name encapsulates an enigma. Rajarajeswara was meant by the double-entendre to refer both to the king and deity. Yet paradoxically the king called himself, sivapada sekhara, ornament at the feet of Siva. Its monumental proportions made some scholars argue that it was an edifice erected to glorify the king as devaraja or god king. A few scholars have even scanned the serried sculptures of the temple in order to identify the statue of the royal patron, the king himself. Recent historians writing under the shadow of post-colonial constructs of South Indian States as “segmentary states” have found in the very architecture of the Rajarajesvara Temple the substance of sacred kingship with the temple acting as the earthy anchor or axis mundi connecting the heavens to the royal house. The suggestion that the temple of Rajaraja’s imagination was a pallippadai shrine has been used to reinforce the sacred character of the royal patron and his artistic creation. All these different interpretations crowd the historiographical space in which the great temple of Rajaraja-I has been located.

In this presentation we attempt a reading of the temple from different perspective. At the most simple axiomatic level, the great temple like any historical artifact has a definite location in time and space. Therefore we examine the monument from the point of view of the political and intellectual cross currents that played themselves out during the reign of Rajaraja-I. This attempt at historizing the construction and patronage of the temple is premised on the assumption that the royal decision to invest labour and resources in the construction of the large stone temple would necessarily, be informed by political considerations. In this context we argue that Chola succession pattern undewent a significant shift from the time of Rajaraja-I, and the main purpose of the shrine was to provide legitimacy to the patrilineal lineage segment with Rajaraja-I and his immediate direct successors being regarded as the true legatees of the Chola throne(Raghotham: 1997). We may see the construction of the great temple as a device for the establishment of the immediate descent group of Rajaraja-I as the true Chola lineage. Temple construction was therefore a strategy for the projection of the royal lineage with Rajaraja as the prime focus. The historical moment when the Cholas,a precariously situated chieftaincy, located in the Kaveri River Basin was transformed into an imperial power, occurred after the accession of Rajaraja-I in A.D. 985. Given the military campaigns, monumental architecture, literary accomplishments and economic vitality of the age, it is little wonder that historians have viewed Chola history as destiny. Consequently the specific context in which important historical events took place is not given the importance they deserve.

There is a second dimension to the analysis offered here. We argue that the influence of various competing schools of Saivism is found in the art, sculpture and iconography of the great temple. While the codification of Saiva Siddhantha was achieved only towards the end of the Chola period, the iconographic programme and the architectural disposition of the various sub shrines in the temple complex suggests a textual source as the origin of this great monument. An attempt is made to suggest a possible source. K.A.N.Sastri in his magnum opus – The Cholas-- made pertinent observation when he drew attention to the lack of any hint of sanctity associated with the site of the great temple. The temple was altogether a creation Rajaraja’s policy.



                                                              The Historical Context

 

The temple that was built by Rajaraja I has generated a considerable body of literature due to its importance both as a cultural as well as an archaeological site. The credit for deciphering the inscriptions which covered the walls of this monument goes to Eugene Hultczh and his south Indian assistant, V Venkkayya. The publication of the inscriptional record opened the door for systematic investigation, and right form the early decades of the 20th century there has been a steady flow of publications relating to the architectural and iconographic aspects. C Sivarmamamurth in his monumental work Nataraja saw in the sculptures of the Great Temple the possible source of the iconic image of the dancing Shiva. The discovery of the figures of the karanas of Bharatanatyam was indeed a milestone in the cultural history of South India, as the earliest representations of the dance postures are found in this temple. Further, the discovery of murals in the outer courtyard of the temple complex pushed back the antiquity of fresco painting in the Tamil region by nearly 300 years. The architectural inventory by Pierre Pichard entitled Brhdevara, Tanjavur published by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts is an excellent source ofr the study of all the shrines and sub-shrines in the temple complex. More recently R Nagaswamy has published his path breaking Brhadesvara Temple: Form and Meaning. All these studies deal essentially with the artistic and religious aspects but there has been no serious attempt at locating the temple in a historical context with the exception of Geeta Vasudevans’s The Royal Temple of Rajarara.

The temple was consecrated on 275 days of the 25th regnal year of Rajaraja-I when the king gave the brass kalasa as the sign indicating the end of the construction of the shrine. The 25th regnal year of Rajaraja-I according to the calculation of N.Sethuraman commenced on a day of Punarvasa in the aparpaksha (dark fort night) in Karkatataka of 1009. Therefore, the 275th day fell on 22nd April, 1010 on the same day when Punarvasu was current (Sethuraman: 1987 17-32). Though he was born under the star Sadayam, Rajaraja chose to have the temple consecrated on a day when his star of accession was ascendant. This fact alerts us to the strong possibility of royal power and dynasty consideration informing the decision to have the temple constructed.

The 25th year of Rajaraja-I had witnessed the phenomenal expansion of the Chola empire. The historical introduction to the royal inscriptions meykirrti provides the historian with a fairly accurate account of the expansion and territorial reach of the Chola Empire. From his 8th regional year royal inscriptions display a medley of phrases that evoke a picture of relentless victories. Like other medieval monarch, Rajaraja-I too sought to craft for his dynasty a royal mystique that yoked religious symbols, concepts and roles to the purely temporal purposes of political power. While no copperplate inscription of Rajaraja I has yet come to light, his inscriptions engraved on the adistana of the Rajarajesvara Temple provide us with material for analysis. While historians have investigated the contents of the prasasti beginning with the phrase, tirumagal pola for clues relating to the sequence of military conquests all over Peninsular India, the fact is that poets like Narayana Ravi who composed the prasasti used scraps of historical memory, puranic genealogical lore, mythical recollections to create eulogies for Chola Kings, whose truth value for the historian is not always above suspicion.

Post modernist perspectives have to some extent rehabilitated medieval South India’s encounter with historiography. Historical narratives are constructs, the argument goes, that impose order, coherence and meaning on the events of the past. Instead of lamenting the deplorable lack of historical aesthetic in the medieval period, some historians celebrate the very absence of the notion of rational chronological history, by re imagining royal Chola eulogies as a trope of World History, as does Daud Ali. The very structure of Chola Copperplate inscriptions such as the Tiruvalankadu inscription of Rajendra I issued in his 6 th regnal year, argues Ali is an elaboration of the puranic horizon of historiography on to the changing, shifting pattern of dynastic ebb and flow (Daud Ali 2000: 165-229). The very recovery of the Chola monarchy after the cataclysmic collapse at the battle of Takkolam in 949, essentially during the rule of Rajaraja-I may have forced a sense of historical evaluation predicated upon the understanding that change is the essence of history. K G Krishnan has observed in his study of Chola royal inscriptions that Rajaraja’s inscriptional preambles have a stereotyped beginning, after which his conquests are mentioned in an order that is seemingly random (K G Krishnan 1987: 43-50). If historical narratives mimic the actual order of events, then Chola inscriptional rhetoric is not historical, even though they may contain a few grains of truth. There is even a suggestion that Rajaraja I may have emulated the Rashtrakuta King, Krishnan III whose Sanikkavadi inscription contains a verse introduction.

The great temple contains two lengthy inscriptions containing a detailed record of the gifts given by Rajaraja I on the occasion of the consecration of the temple S I I vol. II 1,2,). Published more than a century ago, the first of these is 107 paragraphs long and spans the regnal years 25 to 29, almost till the end of this reign. We may point out that the title Rajaraja was used by the king only from his 19th regal year. It is in this inscription in paragraphs 55 – 91 that the king refers to himself as Sivapada, Sekara and from the context of its appearance it is clear that the very act of extending patronage to this stone temple, “tiruk-karralai” was behind the grant of the title. It was again in this significant inscription that Rajaraja-I proclaimed to the world that the gifts handed over by him to the temple which were recorded in paragrphas 51 – 54 came from the war booty captured after his victory over the “Cheras and Pandyas of Malai nadu( S I I vol II #1 para 51).

The collage of genealogy --- puranic and mythical – meykrithi --- historical and chronological and dana – gifts at once magnificent and unrivalled all in a single lengthy inscription suggests that the monarch was constructing an image of kingship that lifted the Chola ruling house from status of one of the 3 crowned kings – muvendar – to one of absolute preeminence in the political landscape. Hence conquest and temple patronage must be viewed in the historical context.

There was yet another aspect of early Chola Kingship that we need to consider – the pattern of succession. While historians generally present the four countries of Chola rule from A.D. 850 till the end of the thirteenth century as “a glorious age”, they tend to overlook the ruptures and disjunctions in the pattern of succession. We may argue that the policy of monumental construction which the Brahadesvara Temple undoubtedly represented was a strategy pursued by the Chola Monarch, Rajaraj-I to provide a high degree of visibility to him and his immediate lineage. The patronage of Rajaraja I to the temple was spread over 4 years and continued until his 29th regnal year which was his last, as 1014 saw the accession of Rajendra – I (1014-1044) to the throne. George W Spencer has argued that the sponsorship of the monumental project of temple construction aimed at encouraging Bhakti as an ideology, and by propagating the worship of Siva in stone temples, a policy that was initiated first by early Chola kings such as Aditya – I (871-907) and Parantaka-I (907-955), the Cholas essentially aimed at consolidating Bhakti devotionalism by making temples the focii of personal devotion (Spencer 1969:47).



George. W. Spencer. “Religious networks and royal influence in eleventh century south India” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the orient , Vol 12, no 1 (1969),



This thesis ignores the specific historical and political context in which the great temple was located, and places salience only on one feature, viz the institutionalization of the tevaram which is first documented in the Rajarajesvara Temple at Tanjavur. Champakalakshmi too has argued that the presentation of the metallic images of the Tevaram trio was a significant measure in furthering the reach of Bhakti in popular consciousness.

Inscription 38 published in South Indian Inscriptions vol. II is the evidence on which the thesis of royal patronage to Bhakti cult is based on. This inscription issued in the last year of Rajaraja-I, the 29th regnal yearconsists of 65 paragraphs and is found on the first niche of the West Enclosure. The gift of images was not made by the king or even by a member of the immediate royal family but by Adittan Suryan, a muvendavelan of Poygi Nadu in Kaveri Delta (S I I vol II # 68). Hence a direct attribution of royal patronage to the Bhakti cult is difficult to sustain.

Having shown on the basis of the evidence that the temple does not bear witness to the devotion to Bhakti on the part of the Chola monarch, we must explore other reasons for the elaborate construction.

The Chola state was a hereditary kingship in which the politics of kinship translated in to the politics of state building and empire making. We may note that the initial success of the Cholas in making themselves the masters of the Kaveri Delta region was predicated upon the successful matrimonial alliance the ___ rulers had built with the Muttaraiyas and the Irukkuvels of Kodumbalur. Inscriptions of Parantaka – I record the alliance between Rajaditiya, his eldest son and the chieftains of Miladu. The importance of this alliance was further strengthened when Uttama Chola, the brother of Rajaditya married Siddvadvan, Chuttiyar from the Miladu Lineage. Sembiyan Mahadevi, the paternal aunt of Rajaraja-I hailed from the Malavaraiyar chieftains. The Rashtrakuta invasion which caused the collapse of the Chola state following the cataclysmic defeat at the Battle of Takkalam in A D 949 was instigated in part by the conflicting dynastic claims between the sons born of the queens from the Rastrakuta lineage and the Irukkuvel lineage i.e. Adiyan Kannaradeva and Parantaka-I. Rajaditya the eldest son of Parantaka was killed. The Parakesari Adiya II too seems to have been killed and the succession passed to Uttama Chola, the tragic circumstances of the accession of Uttama Chola are recounted in the Tiruvalankadu Copper plate inscriptions of Rajendra I. The enclosed genealogical table makes this point amply clear (Trautman: 1981).

Given the tangled nature of dynastic succession in the early Chola period with different segments of the Chola lineage vying for the throne, the construction of huge temple in which Rajaraja-I and his immediate family are found as primary patrons, it may be argued that patronage extended to the great temple was a strategy to enhance the standing and royal mystique of the patrilineal descent group from Vijayalaya to Parantaka I and Sundara Chola and then to Rajaraja I. A hint about the intimate relations between the Chola ruling family and the temple is revaled by the fact that the sister of Rajaraja-I and daughter of Sundara Chola, Kundavai, presented metal images of `ponmaligai Tunjiya Devan’ and Vanavan Mahadevi were installed ( S I I vol II # 6). The mother of Rajaraja-I became sati on the death of Sundara Chola. The installation of the metal images and the commemoration of the sati by the queen of Sundara Chola indicate that Rajaraja’s primary purpose was to enhance the standing and visibility of his own royal family. The fact that after the death of Rajaraja-I his son Rajendra-I succeeded him and even the disputed succession of Kullotunga-I in A.D. 1070, was within the patrilineal descent group of Rajaraja-I.


Instead of viewing the construction of the great temple as an act of religious devotion dedicated to the propagation of the Bhakthi relgion, we have argued that Rajaraja-I aimed to increase the visibility and legitimacy of his own immediate group. Of the two lineages with which the Cholas had their most intense matrimonial and kin relations--the Malavaraiyars and the Irukkuvels—it appears that it was the Irukkuvel line of chieftains who enjoyed the most favoured treatment at the hands of the Chola ruling house and the image of the Queen Vanavan Mahadevi was installed in the Great Temple and this queen hailed from the Irukkuvel family

                                                       Saiva agamas and Chola Kingship
 
The reign of Rajaraja-I witnessed important transformation in the character and practice of religion (Davis 1991: 14-19). The discovery of the lost hymns of the Saivite trio --- Appar, Sambunudar and Sundarar ---- according to popular belief took place during the reign of this Chola monarch. The gradual and steady incorporation of places associated with the Saivite hymns - the Thevaram --- into the sacred geography of Tamil devotional religion is evidenced in the Anbil Copper Plates in which the transformation of sites associated with the hymns to local variations or identification of Siva are said to have become `tirukarralai’ or stone temples. We may point out that a vast majority of the 260 places which may be identified with a degree of accuracy with the hymns of the Thevaram, actually are located within the Kaveri Delta, the core region of the Chola. Hence it is certainly possible that successive Chola kings sought to under grid the legitimacy of their rule by making visible changes in the edifice and ritual calendar of temples associated with the hymns of Tevaram. As we have pointed out, the great temple at Tanjavur does not commemorate a padal perratalam. It has no obvious relationship with the tradition of Saiva devotional religion or the practice of Bhakti. Unlike Tiruvarur which had received songs from all the three major saints, Tanjavur does not figure even in one. It is therefore quite incorrect to argue that the purpose behind the construction of the great temple was to institute the Thevarm as the dominant liturgy of the Temple.



Is there an agamic source for the art, architecture and iconography of the Great Temple? Right from the time when T A Gopinath Rao published his monumental Elements of Hindu Iconography speculation has been rife about the textual sources underlying the construction of the temple. This question has not been raised in recent years primarily due to the overwhelming dependence on theoretical constructs such as the model of the segmentary state propounded by Burton Stein. His concept of sacred kingship in which the distinction between King and God is rendered ambiguous, if not altogether superfluous is predicated on the idea that Indian kingship was a sacred institution and by constructing and sponsoring worship, kings were essentially advancing their own claims to sacredness. In the case of the Cholas it was all the easier to suggest the theory of sacrality of kingship because the kings chose to name the temples constructed after their own names. We have already drawn attention to the name, Rajarajesvara, given to this temple, a name that plays upon the very ambiguity between the name of the king and the deity installed therein.

Burton Stein in his Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India suggested that the Rajarajesvara Temple was a pallippadai shrine constructed in order to express the apotheosis of kinship into semi divinity. Given the importance attached to the theoretical construct of “sacred kingship” derived from Hocartian notion of incorporative kingship, Stein interpreted the spectacular architectural and visual impact of the Great Temple as a medieval south Indian variation of Ankor Wat. R Nagaswamy has ably demonstrated that the great temple was built and consecrated in the life time of Rajaraja I and therefore it could not have been a funerary shrine (Nagaswamy 1988: 172). Burton Stein seems to have concluded that the Rajarajesvara Temple was a shrine erected over the mortal remains of the king because his theory of sacred kingship demanded a devaraja cult akin to the royal practice in Cambodia. Other historians such as George W Spencer and James Heitzman (Heitzman 1997: 121-34) have viewed the royal patronage extended to the temple as strategies designed to integrate a weakly articulated polity by creating an elaborate web of monetary and other transactions that essentially transformed the temple into a nodal point of socio-economic integration. The gifts of power in the form of land, gold, livestock, money and capital were deployed to create a political space in which the rule of the Chola king and from the reign of Rajaraja I that of the patrilenial lineage from Sundara Chola downwards remained uncontested and by elevating the Chola family to a level of eminence where they reigned like the “Sons of the Sun”

The Gifts of Power: Lordship in an Early India State by James Heitzman is a valuable contribution to the analysis of the eely Chola state. Using the inscriptions found engraved on the walls of the Rajarajesvara temple, heitzman is able to establish a widely dispersed network of peasants, pastoralists, merchants and military leaders who participated in and cooperated with the Chola monarch in his political and military ventures. His work demonstrates that the Cholas did possess a strong institutional mechanism by which to make their presence flet in the widely dispersed agrarian settlements of the Kaveri Delta. Given the absence of a bureaucracy through which power could be articulated, the Cholas seized control over the redistributive nexus that linked social groups to the temple. Heitzman’s work carries forward the path breaking analysis of Spencer who more than 4 decades back showed that the livestock and money invested in the temple was used to create a steady flow of resources from the local peasant economies into the coffers of the temple. Thus livestock gifted to the temple were entrusted to the pastoral communities whose participation in the elaborate economic schemes centering around the temple offers some evidence of the inclusive social and economic policy of the Chola period.

The association of the Great Temple of Rajaraja I with a number of important Saivite monastic traditions has been noted by a number of scholars. The name of the deity installed in the temple, Dakshina meru Vittankar in a sense suggests a new habitat for Siva, relocation from Utterameru (northern Meru) to the south, a claim that the digvijaya of Rajaraja I has created a new home for Siva and thereby sacralised the landscape of the Kaveri Delta is a worthwhile speculation. The agamic injunction that a mukyaprasada or pre eminent temple could only be built and patronized by a king whose realm incorporated a number of lesser kingdoms in much the same way a the Great temple had a variety of sub shrines for a whole panoply of parivaradevatas. The following are the sub shrines found in the temple

1 Surya

2 Saptamatrika

3 Ganapathi

4 Subrahmanya

5 Jeyesta

6 Chandra

7 Chandesvara and

8 Bhairava



In addition the temple displays the asta dikpapalas:

1 Indra

2 Agni

3 Yama

4 Nirutti

5 Varuna

6 Vayu

7 Soma and

8 Isana

The disposition of the asta parivaradevata shrines together with the prominence accorded to the image of Tripurantaka in the iconographic programme of the temple makes it clear that an early saiva siddantha text was the inspiration behind the temple. The saiva siddantha inspiration behind the Great Temple is also suggested by the presence of the raudra-mahakalam temple, one of the horrific forms of Siva which is referred to by Venkkayya in his Introduction ( S I I vol II Introduction p 40). The patronage extended to the pasupathas, kapalikas and the kalamukahs by the Cholas, a practice probably derived from the Irrukkuvels, is also seen in the Great Temple whose ritual authority was a kalamukha ascetic. The explicit mention of Isana Pandita draws pointed attention to the agamic text Isana Siva Guru Padatthhi, which was probably followed in the temple.

In Saiva Siddantha as enunciated by the pre Umapathi acharyas, the main focus of devotion was Sadasiva, a deity which is a composite of five entities: Isana, Tatpuruha, Aghorasiva, Sadyojata, and Vamadeva. The iconographic form in which this deity was represented is described in the inscription of Rajaraja I ( S I I vol II pt 2 # 30 pp. 137-38): One solid image forming one of five bodies (murthis) of pancadeha, having ten divine arm has and measuring 22 virals and 4 torais in height from feet to hair. Nagaswamy has provided a conjectural reconstruction of this rare iconographic form and it may be observed that an image of this deity has not been identified in any other temple.

The Saivasidhanta inspiration behind the Rajarajesvara temple is clear from a number of other historical and iconographic details.






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