your bridge home
True Valor
More than a hundred inscriptions cover the granite, and almost none of them are about God.
The temple is an archive that happens to be a building.
The Brihadisvara at Thanjavur was built between 1003 and 1010. The vimana over the sanctum goes up 63.4 metres. 208 feet. In sixteen storeys of granite.
And there is a single block at the base weighing around eighty tons. It is one of the great buildings of the world and that is not what this is about.
This is about the writing on it.
More than a hundred inscriptions. Mostly in Tamil. Some in Grantha and Devanagari script.
All cut into the stone, in a formal, beautiful hand.
They are not scripture. They are not poetry. They are, overwhelmingly, accounts.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.