Latest / The Chola Empire: How South India Dominated the Indian Ocean — Fexingo History / Chola Inscriptions: The Lost Library of Temple Walls
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Chola temples, their bronze sculptures, their military campaigns. But there's one thing we haven't really touched on that is arguably the richest source for understanding this entire civilization — the inscriptions. Luna: You mean the ones carved on temple walls? Lucas: Exactly. The Cholas were obsessive record-keepers. They inscribed everything onto stone and copper plates. And I mean everything — land grants, tax assessments, temple inventories, royal orders, even the names of individual dancers and musicians employed at a temple. The Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur alone has over a hundred inscriptions, most from Rajaraja Chola I's reign. Lucas: These inscriptions are not just lists. They're narratives. One famous inscription on the Brihadeeswarar temple wall runs to over 1000 lines. It details the exact amount of land donated to the temple, the villages that supplied it, the salaries paid to priests and temple staff, even the gold and silver ornaments gifted to the deities. It's basically a balance sheet for a divine institution. Luna: So it's like a public audit, but carved in stone for eternity. Lucas: Exactly. And the level of detail is staggering. For example, the inscription records that a certain dancer named Nangai Pudi — remember her from the episode on temple donors? — was given a salary of 100 kalam of paddy per year. We know her name, her role, and her pay, all from a stone wall. Luna: That's incredible. How did they even carve that much text? Lucas: They employed specialist stone carvers — perumtachans, they were called — who would chisel the text into prepared granite slabs or onto the temple's base moldings. The script is usually Tamil in the Grantha or Tamil script, depending on the period. And the precision is remarkable. Some inscriptions have letters less than a centimeter high, perfectly aligned across meters of stone. Lucas: But the Cholas didn't just use stone. They also used copper plates, which were more portable and could be stored in temple treasuries or palace archives. The most famous set is the Leyden Plates — a set of copper plates discovered in the Netherlands in the 19th century. They had somehow ended up in a Dutch museum before being returned to India. Luna: Wait, how did Chola copper plates end up in the Netherlands? Lucas: That's a great question. The plates were actually a grant by a later Chola king, possibly Rajendra Chola III, to a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam called the Chudamani Vihara. That monastery had been built by the Srivijaya king, and the grant was recorded on copper plates. Somehow, during the colonial period, these plates were taken to Europe by a Dutch trader or official. They ended up in the Leiden University library — hence the name Leyden Plates. Luna: So they're a direct link between the Cholas and Southeast Asia. Lucas: Exactly. And they're written in Tamil and Sanskrit, with a reference to the Srivijaya connection. It's one of the few surviving documents that confirm the extensive diplomatic and religious ties across the Bay of Bengal. Lucas: But the real breakthrough in studying these inscriptions came in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when British scholars and Indian epigraphists began systematically copying and publishing them. The Archaeological Survey of India launched the South Indian Inscriptions series, and people like E. Hultzsch and later K. A. Nilakanta Sastri deciphered thousands of texts. Luna: So the inscriptions basically built our entire understanding of Chola history. Lucas: Absolutely. Without them, we'd know almost nothing about their administration, economy, or daily life. The literary sources from that period are mostly religious poems, not chronicles. The inscriptions are the closest we have to an official record. And they're remarkably honest — they record not just donations but also disputes. For example, there are inscriptions that record a village assembly's decision to use temple funds for irrigation repairs, with a note that the local chieftain had to approve it. Lucas: Some inscriptions even record complaints. One from the reign of Rajaraja Chola I mentions that a certain temple servant was accused of stealing gold from the deity's crown. The case was investigated, and the temple's executive committee — the sabha — ordered the servant to repay the value of the gold. It's like a legal document. Luna: So they had a functioning legal system tied to the temples. Lucas: Exactly. The temples were not just religious centers; they were economic and administrative hubs. And the inscriptions tell us exactly how they operated. For instance, we know that the Brihadeeswarar temple had a staff of over 600 people — priests, accountants, dancers, musicians, florists, cooks, watchmen. And their salaries were paid out of the temple's land revenues, which were collected from dozens of villages. Lucas: And this system of recording everything on stone continued long after the Cholas declined. The Pandyas, Vijayanagara, and even the Nayaks kept the tradition alive. But the Chola inscriptions are special because they're the earliest large-scale corpus in Tamil — they mark the transition from the ancient Sangam period to the medieval. Luna: What about the script itself? Was it hard to decipher? Lucas: Initially, yes. The earliest Chola inscriptions use a script derived from the Brahmi script — what we call Tamil Brahmi, which had been used for centuries. But by the 9th and 10th centuries, the script evolved into a more angular form called Grantha, which was used for Sanskrit words, while the Tamil part was in a rounder script called Vatteluttu. It took decades of painstaking work by epigraphists to read them correctly. Lucas: And there are still thousands of unpublished inscriptions lying in temple walls, on loose stones, or in private collections. Every year, new ones are discovered and published. For example, in 2021, a set of 11th-century Chola inscriptions was found on a rock near Tiruvannamalai, detailing a water management agreement between two villages. Luna: So there's still a lot we don't know. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes epigraphy so exciting. Every new inscription can rewrite a chapter of history. For instance, a recently discovered inscription in Thanjavur district mentions a merchant guild called the 'Manigramam' — which we've discussed in earlier episodes — but it also gives details of their trade in pepper and textiles with ports on the Malabar coast. That fills in a gap in our understanding of their network. Lucas: But there's also a challenge: forgeries. Because copper plates were valuable, some were faked in later centuries to claim tax exemptions. Epigraphists have to be careful to authenticate them by analyzing the script, the language, and the content. Luna: So it's a bit like detective work. Lucas: It really is. And it's a detective story that's still unfolding. The Chola inscriptions are not just silent stones — they're a vast library that we're only beginning to read fully. Each inscription is a voice from a thousand years ago, telling us about a land grant, a tax dispute, or a temple festival. And they're waiting for us to listen. Luna: I never thought of temple walls as archives before. This changes how I see them. Lucas: That's the magic of epigraphy. Next time you look at a Chola temple, remember that the walls are speaking. And if you know how to read them, they'll tell you everything.