The Story of India 4: Ages of Gold (11 of 18)

The Story of India

Archaeologists have discovered the stone bases to the immense wooden columns in the front of the reception hall.
Rajaraja the Great would have sat on his throne here, surrounded by his queens and his ministers, his concubines and his poets, with the court there, assembled in front, ready to receive the royal largesse.
(PEOPLE HAILING) In modern times Rajaraja's reign has come to be seen as a Tamil Golden Age, celebrated in novels, plays and in movies.
Indeed in the civil war in Sri Lanka, the Tamil rebels have even modelled their oaths of loyalty on those of the Cholan army.
But Rajaraja himself deserves better to be remembered as great ruler and patron and an even more assiduous record keeper.
Don't think for a moment that it was the British who brought bureaucracy into India.

The reality of the Cholan state is revealed in an amazing series of records carved on the walls of the great temple in Tanjore.
The temple's not only a monumental piece of self-advertisement, it's also a written record of the administration of the Cholan Empire.
It even lists all the staff, hundreds of them, who were brought in to serve the Emperor's new foundation.
Craftsmen, artists, musicians and 400 dancing girls, and they are listed by name, by house number and by street in the quarter that was specially built for them.
For the historian, the detail is irresistible.
For history, after all, is not just about kings, it's about ordinary people who are usually nameless.
But not here.
Who, for example, was the dancer Tirumahalam who lived here in Rajaraja's new royal city on South Street, on the south side, in house number 88? Where is numbering of street? Oh, I see! Okay.
Thank you, yes.
So, of course, there is a difference between old numbering and new numbering.
Nobody's expecting the 11th century numbering to be quite the same as it is today.
But counting the houses from the junction of the street, number 88, where a dancing girl called Tirumahalam lived, is somewhere here.
Hello.