The Chola Empire under Rajendra I was among the most powerful states in Asia. His naval expeditions reached Southeast Asia, and his northern campaigns carried Chola banners to the Ganges River basin. The city he built to commemorate these conquests was not a provincial outpost but a planned imperial capital, with streets and temple complexes that the 11th-century Tamil poet Kambar may have used as his model when describing the legendary city of Ayodhya. Literary works of the period -- the Muvar Ula, a treatise on the Cheras, Cholas, and Pandyas, and Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam -- provide vivid accounts of Gangaikonda Cholapuram's grandeur. The city was designed to project power through architecture, and the Brihadisvara Temple was its crown.

The temple's walls are carved with an extraordinary density of sculptural programs representing multiple Hindu traditions simultaneously. Nataraja -- Shiva as the cosmic dancer -- appears in multiple forms, treading on the demon of ignorance. Parvati accompanies Shiva in poses ranging from amorous to meditative. Dakshinamurti, Shiva as the supreme teacher, is shown instructing in yoga, dance, and the sciences. But the temple does not belong to Shaivism alone. Vishnu appears in his Vaishnavism tradition, alongside Gajalakshmi. Brahma is represented as a Vedic deity. Kali and Durga represent Shaktism. One remarkable sculpture fuses Vaishnavism and Shaktism, depicting Vishnu-Durga and reflecting the belief that Durga is Vishnu's sister. Secular scenes -- apsaras, ganas, and images of daily life -- appear in numerous reliefs, turning the temple into a document of both sacred theology and everyday 11th-century Chola existence.

Not all of the temple's history is triumphant. Desecrated deity reliefs are visible on its walls -- faces chiseled away, limbs broken. The reasons for this damage are debated but not mysterious. Malik Kafur's armies invaded the Chola heartland in 1311 under orders from the Delhi Sultanate, followed by Khusrau Khan in 1314 and Muhammad bin Tughlaq in 1327. The Madurai Sultanate controlled the region from 1335 to 1378. Statues recovered from surrounding ruins hint at the full scale of the destruction that befell Gangaikonda Cholapuram -- a city that had once rivaled any in South Asia reduced to scattered foundations and broken stone. When the Vijayanagara Empire defeated the Madurai Sultanate in 1378, Hindu kings returned to restore and repair what they could. The temple survived because people kept worshipping in it, through centuries of political upheaval, as an act of continuity that was itself a form of resistance.

What makes the Great Living Chola Temples "living" is not merely that they still stand. It is that they still function. The Brihadisvara Temple follows Shaivite tradition, with priests performing puja four times daily: Kalasanthi at 8:30 a.m., Uchikalam at 12:30 p.m., Sayarakshai at 6:00 p.m., and Arthajamam between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. Each ritual involves three steps -- alangaram (decoration), neivethanam (food offering), and deepa aradanai (waving of lamps) -- performed for both the main deity Brihadeeswarar and the goddess Periya Nayagi. Major festivals mark the calendar: Shivarathri in the Tamil month of Masi, Aipassi Pournami in Aipassi, and Thiruvadirai in Margazhi. During the Aipasi festival, the presiding deity receives Annabhishekam -- ablution with cooked rice. The Archaeological Survey of India administers the temple as a monument, but worship has never stopped. In July 2014, the millennium of Rajendra Chola's coronation was celebrated here over two days, connecting the present to the empire that built these walls.