Hi all, Its been quite sometime since I posted, and I was waiting for the yathirai people to settle down and relax before posting this. I came across this wonderful book on the hindu temple architectures. The book gives the base architecture plans and writeup on almost all temple architecture in India. I scanned the pages on the Thanjavur temple and have uploaded in a couple of sites. (The coverpage of the book is also scanned). Problem is, the images are high resolution (I didnt mess up with it for readability) and the page may take a while to load. It *did* load for Krupa, when he was browsing from Dreamsnet (is that 128, Krupa?). So, if the net connection is slow and it is not loading, please excuse me. I wanted to work on it in Fireworks or something and decrease the image size, but couldnt do due to lack of time. If it takes a while to load, please wait. Its worth the wait. It is only select pages from the book, for educational purposes. If you think there would be copyright problems, moderator can delete this mail, and I'll delete the site :) Here's the URL: http://kalki.gq.nu/chola.htm Alternate URL: http://www.geocities.com/thilaxxx/chola/chola.html
What do you all think? Thilak
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious. - Murphy's law
Thilak, Wonderful man !! Kalakkiteenga ! Some of these sculptures cannot be seen even if you go to tanjore in person - the krishna number I could not see last time I visited the temple. Andha gopikayin viyappu - appappa ! aayiram varushathu arpudham !
The sita statue is perhaps one of the finest specimens of chola artisans. Dr.C.Sivaramammorty - in his monumental work "South Indian bronzes" - explicitely deals with this icon in detail.
Have any of you seen that ram - lakshmana group of deities in Vaduvur - near tanjore ? In my humble opinion, there is no other bronze sculpture more beautiful than them in the whole of India.
I don't know where I kept the pics - I shall upload them once I find them.
It was such a treat to have you all here. It was a short meeting, and you were all tired. My monologue would not have helped your tired mind, but the bottled drink, I hope, was a welcome change.
Unfortunately we didn’t have time to explain our work here. We care aware that we are not going to create waves, but the attempt is worth the trouble, we feel.
Now that we, that some of you and us, the Sudharsanam family, have met, we may have a fruitful time together.
First we would like the PS group to visit our site www.pudukkottai.org. We would like you to suggest improvements as for as the site design is concerned. Secondly, as you might have seen from the site that we are attempting to document the history and heritage of Pudukkottai, it is your suggestion and help in this effort we seek. I had mentioned elsewhere our choice of Pudukkottai is because the people connected with Sudharsanam have Pudukkottai connection. I feel every district of the country is unique and the history and heritage of each one of them need to be documented.
Our second aim is to provide an opportunity for the youth to know about of heritage.
In both of these objectives a young group like you can provide us enormous help.
One issue which I highlighted when some of you visited us during the Irandam Yaththirai recently. This is the developmental dimension of culture. I would be very happy to enter into a dialogue with you all through this Yahoo Group or individually. I consider that this aspect is important. In this connection I may mention that I was invited to contribute to a column called Personal Perspective by the Indian Institute of Mangement, Bangalore. In this I have not only dealt with this aspect, but also covered quite a few issues, some somewhat controversial. I can post it in the group or I can send to people individually, if you want.
It gives me great pleasure in being in touch with you all.
With best wishes
Swaminathan
along with Vasudeva Kiran, Muruga Pandian and Jayashri