Rajaraja I completes the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur

According to the temple records the building was begun about 1003, and by 1006 it was far enough advanced for Rajaraja, returning from his war against the Western Chalukya king Satyashraya, to worship in the central shrine with offerings of golden flowers. On the 275th day of the 25th year of his reign — in the spring of 1010 — the king solemnly dedicated the copper pot (kalasha) that was to crown the finial at the top of the tower. The temple stands in a rectangular court divided by a partition wall; its pyramidal tower (vimana) rises over the sanctum from a square base, the sanctum holds one of the largest Shiva lingas in India, and the walls around it were plastered and painted. No record explains how the granite blocks were transported and raised.

The temple was also an economic institution. Inscriptions cut on its walls list the endowments made by the king, the court and officials, and villages from all parts of the empire were required to supply men and materials to it year after year according to a fixed schedule; Nilakanta Sastri believed that the conquered countries paid part of the cost. Rajaraja’s son Rajendra I raised a second great temple of the same type at his new capital, Gangaikondacholapuram. Still in worship, the Thanjavur temple was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987, and in 2004 the listing was extended, as the Great Living Chola Temples, to the temples of Gangaikondacholapuram and Darasuram.