"Though the great Cholas are no more, yet their name is still remembered with great pride because of their highest achievements in the domain of art and architecture." Comment.

Imperial temples as state and stone

The Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur was built by Rajaraja I. It is a granite Dravida temple with a tall vimana, a large Shiva image, and walls that still hold painting and inscriptions of court life. Gangaikonda Cholapuram was Rajendra’s new capital after his Ganga expedition. He built a second great linga shrine there. Airavatesvara at Darasuram, built under a later Chola, is smaller and more finely carved. Together these three are the Great Living Chola Temples, a UNESCO set, because worship has continued in them. The temple was also a political building. It held treasure, staged public ritual, and showed the king’s claim to cosmic order. The Dravida form of a storeyed vimana, an enclosed prakara, and later gateway growth is taught in these courtyards.

• Thanjavur: The temple shows large scale, axial planning, and a royal cult of Rajarajesvara.
• Gangaikonda: Military success in the north was marked by a second sacred capital.
• Darasuram: Later Chola work refined the earlier height and mass of Thanjavur.

Bronze, painting and processional images

Chola bronzes were made by the lost-wax (cire perdue) method. They are the other half of the artistic achievement. The Nataraja, the processional utsava murti, and the Uma-Maheshvara groups were meant to be carried in festival streets. They were not meant only to sit in a garbhagriha. This was art used in public religion. Murals in the Thanjavur circumambulatory, where they survive, and temple jewellery complete the same programme. Stone sculpture of dvarapalas, narrative panels, and portraits of donors is strong. It is less erotic than Khajuraho. The Chola wall is more hierarchical and dynastic.

• Lost-wax icons: Portable metal images served a mobile bhakti public.
• Nataraja: Chola-period bronzes fixed Tamil Shaiva thought in metal in a lasting form.
• Painting and inscription: The temple recorded land gifts, dance, and court life.

How far the praise is complete

The comment is fair on quality. Few Indian dynasties left a sacred landscape that is still so fully in use. It is incomplete as history. Chola pride also rests on the navy in the Bay of Bengal, the Sri Lanka and Srivijaya campaigns, irrigation of the Kaveri delta, and a brahmadeya–nagaram agrarian order. Art was the visible surplus of that order. Later Vijayanagara gopurams grew larger than Chola gateways. Pallava Mamallapuram had already shown how to cut stone. The Cholas stand at a high point in a longer South Indian line. They did not invent temple building in a vacuum.

• Not only art: Water, war, and temple urbanism funded the vimana.
• Living continuity: Pride survives because worship continued.
• Balanced comment: The stone and bronze deserve praise. The state that paid for them should also be named.

The sentence in the question is therefore a right emphasis for GS art history. It is only a partial portrait of the Chola century.