Architecture

Since this is my first blog, I would like to talk about my home country India. As soon as we think of India, the first thing that comes to our mind is the Taj Mahal. But Taj Mahal is like a grain of sand in a desert. There are many more architectural wonders in India. Now I would like to talk about the Tanjore “Big Temple”. This was built in 1009 A.D. It has crossed over one thousand years and is still stable. This temple has been declared as a UNESCO “World Heritage” site.

I would call this temple an architectural wonder.  This temple was constructed by the Cholan king Rajaraja, which means king of kings. This temple was built with only granite stones. Granite is one of the hardest stones in the world. But there are lots of carvings of statues and inscriptions on the walls. The temple is 216ft high and at the time it was constructed, this was the largest building on earth, of its kind.

The top most part of the temple is made up of a single stone, which weighs around 80 tons. But the question is how they lifted an 80 ton stone to a height of 216ft in 1010 A.D. They used simple Mechanics and rolled the stone over an inclined plane of 6 degrees and this inclined plane stretched a whopping 6.44 km. A small part of the inclined could still be found.

The most intriguing phenomenon is that on any given day at noon this temple will not have a shadow. But even a small stick will have its shadow on the earth except on two days a year. There is no magic involved in here. This temple was constructed in such a way that the shadow falls on the structure itself and doesn’t fall on the ground.

This temple also has a one hundred and eight statues of different dance poses of the classical dance of that region called Bharatanatyam. The structures are so clear and precise, that they are still used today to teach young students, the various stances involved in dancing.

This is a must visit place for anyone who comes to India. It would be a breath taking view and an awesome experience of walking through history would be yours.