Gentlemen:
Thank you! You've made my day!
Nagarifle:
It would be far too presumptuous for me to even tackle a minute slice of ancient Indian history. My impression is that only true scholars could claim to master something so complex.
Wikipedia has a nice thumbnail of Rajaraja Chola here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajaraja_Chola_I
However, I hope that it would be an acceptable substitute for me to offer to you why I find Rajaraja Chola so interesting:
I have always been interested in history since I was a little kid. My first foray into the subject was Ancient Egypt, a common enough interest. In my adult life, I have looked into a wide range of subjects, especially Poland, New Mexico, Central Europe and WW1, but especially over the 10 years or so, Mexico.
I went back to college to enter a new career in 2004 and quickly encountered many Indian students. The first friend I made was a Malayali woman with whom I've become fast friends. On Wednesday, she returned to Kerala to get married and will live in London with her husband. I fear I'll never see her again.
However, she told me many things that inspired an interest in Kerala, telling me about the forests and mountains and beautiful falls and rivers.
Then, I worked in a Biotech lab with a Tamil woman, with whom I've also become very good friends. Thru her, I expanded my interest to South India in general, and discovered the ancient nature of Tamil and how it is a "mother language." I started looking into this and found out that the ancient Pallava kingdom occupied much of South India from ~300 on.
It is the Pallava .script that formed the basis for Khmer Alphabet.
Back in 1960, National Geographic Magazine came out with an article titled: "Angkor, Jewel of the Jungle." As a little kid, I read that article over and over. It was so fascinating that I took it to school and reread it on my lunch hour. After all of these years, I was watching a documentary on Angkor and, from studying the South Indian temples a little, noted distinct similarities between them and those at Angkor. I thought, 'hey, this is Hindu!' (Not exactly how I'd pictured Indochina.)
That's how I began to discover how South Indian culture spread thru Southeast Asia and what's now Indonesia (all the way to Bali!) and how I found out about the alphabet of the Khmers. I thought, 'Wow, these people influenced this area of the world like we think of the Ancient Romans and Greeks influencing the Western areas.'
Of all of the empires, like the Cheras and Pandyans that ruled South India at various times, I noticed that the Cholas seemed one of the grandest, not only from the perspective of conquests and territories, but also from the aspects of culture, architecture, widespread sea-based trade, and governmental organization. The chief of these rulers was Rajaraja Chola, who appears to me to have been a ruler, general, statesman, administrator, and builder of great stature.
Evidently, after many conquests, he built the great temple of Brihadeeswarar in Thanjavur. I understand that, toward the end of his reign, he began to contemplate what might be his situation after he passed, and he began to make some preparations so that warfare and conquest would not be his only legacies.
I understand that in building the Brihadeeswarar Temple, he had to have the capstone, a single piece weighing about 80 tons, place on top of a structure about 200 feet high. Archeologists have determined that in order to install this stone, a ramp over a mile long was built that would allow such a heavy stone to be pulled up the ramp. Of course, the ramp itself is long gone and its existence needed to be determined by archeological analysis.
Well, I'm leaving out a lot and probably it doesn't make sense to others why I got interested in this, but there it is.
One of the things about being of Polish descent, I find that all of the history taught in the US schools is very Western European-oriented. For instance, a big deal is made about the English defeat of the Spanish Armada. The upshot of this, historically, was probably the survival of Protestant Christianity.
However, one seldom reads in these school books about how the Spanish defeated the Turks at the naval battle of Lepanto, one of the truly pivotal battles of the world. The upshot of that battle was probably the most of Europe not becoming Muslim, and also Don Juan's use of the 6 giant galleasses prefigured the dominance of the big gun ship over ramming galleys in naval warfare. In other words, Lepanto is far more significant in world history, but it is ignored for the story of the Armada because of a cultural bias.
I suppose that's very nice, but it hardly seems to be the best way to teach kids about various cultures and why people think the way they do. It seems more likely to accomplish the opposite.
Since I've determined to look for significant cultural accomplishments (and exciting history) in other places besides Western Europe and the USA, I've found all sorts of interesting things, and one of the chief ones has been my looking into this subject I've described.
So, I thought that Rajaraja Chola's picture would be a cool avatar.
