Brihadeeswara Temple

The temple is read from the east along a single axis. One passes beneath two gopuram gateways into a long walled court, then through a pillared maṇḍapa to the threshold of the sanctum. The image of Śiva stands in the garbhagṛha, a chamber kept deliberately dark and plain.

Above the sanctum the vimāna rises in thirteen diminishing storeys to a domed śikhara and a single carved finial. Unusually for its date the gateway towers are kept lower than the central tower, so the eye is held on the sanctum itself, not on the perimeter.

Construction is placed within the reign of Rājarāja I. The consecration is firmly fixed by inscription; the start of works is inferred and carries a wider margin. The monument is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an ASI monument of national importance, and remains stable and in worship.

It is told that the king saw the form of the lord in a dream, and vowed a tower that the sun would touch first of all things in the land. The saint Karuvūr Dēvar, it is said, walked the unfinished tiers each dawn, and where his shadow fell the stone was sound.

When the great capstone would not rise, tradition holds that an elephant drew it up a long earthen ramp from a village still called by that name. The story is dear, and it is a story. The record above places the stone, not the elephant.