Big temples

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The first temple in Tanjore is known as the big temple because of it's large sculptures. It is not the biggest temple In the area - see later. The photo shows the two ladies who helped us. We had come from the sanctorum behind and had received from the priest the redscored. The ladies helped us to tie these on correctly. The big temple has an elegant design with sharp corners of the central vimana. At the front there is a huge Nandi (bull) which is a monolith carved from a single piece of stone. The huge cupola on thetool of the vimana is made from eight pieces of granite which were carved in situ. At this temple I particularly noticed that above the carved figures there are mini temples above as a sort of architrave or decorative feature. Our guide also pointed out "magic" sculptures. The most famous of these is one showing an elephant and a bull with the head of the elephant and the head of the bull is one head identifiable from a different perspective.

After this temple we visited the palace and library in Tanjore. The library contains early writing carved into palm leaves. I have seen very similar in Buddhist monasteries. The museum in the palace included a collection of bronzes and sculptures. There was more to see here, but the museum was closing for lunch. We drove to Trichy and visitedthe Sri Ranganathaswamy temple. This temple is enormous. There are seven entrance towers. In the outer three areas the Brahmins live and there are shops and businesses. We climbed up for a view that could only capture some of the huge scale of this temple. In this temple the highligwhereas the hall with thepillars carved pillars. These have horses at the top and scenes of fighting below. There is also a small museum with ivories. This museum would benefit from an upgrade.

The light was fading, but there was time for me to climb up to the rock fort for a view over the city. It was rather hazy.

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