Current Time in Thanjavur, India

Thanjavur lies in the fertile delta of the Kaveri River in eastern Tamil Nadu, southern India, on a flat plain of paddy fields and irrigation channels that has been cultivated for at least two thousand years. The district is known as the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu, and the wealth generated by this agriculture made possible one of the greatest artistic flowerings in Indian history. The climate is hot for most of the year, with rain arriving chiefly with the northeast monsoon between October and December.

About two hundred and twenty thousand people live in the city, but its global importance is out of all proportion to its size, because Thanjavur was the capital of the Chola empire, a maritime power whose fleets and armies reached Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Southeast Asia in the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The supreme monument of that age is the Brihadeeswarar Temple, completed around 1010 during the reign of Rajaraja Chola I and dedicated to Shiva. Built entirely of granite brought from a distance, it is crowned by a tower rising some sixty six metres, topped by a single enormous capstone, and it is guarded by one of the largest monolithic Nandi bull sculptures in India. The temple is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the Great Living Chola Temples, together with the shrines at Gangaikonda Cholapuram and Darasuram, and its walls carry inscriptions and frescoes of extraordinary historical value.

After the Cholas the city passed to the Pandyas, the Vijayanagara Nayaks and finally the Marathas, whose rule lasted until the nineteenth century. The Thanjavur Maratha Palace, a rambling complex of halls, courtyards and a bell tower, contains a superb gallery of Chola bronzes and the Saraswathi Mahal Library, one of the oldest working libraries in Asia, holding tens of thousands of palm leaf and paper manuscripts in Tamil, Sanskrit, Marathi and European languages.

Thanjavur remains a centre of the arts. It gives its name to Tanjore painting, a style using rich colour, inlaid glass and gold foil, and to the distinctive Thanjavur dancing dolls with their rocking heads. The making of the veena, the classical stringed instrument of the south, is a local speciality, and the nearby village of Swamimalai continues the lost wax bronze casting tradition inherited from Chola workshops. The city is closely bound to Carnatic music and to Bharatanatyam dance, and the annual festivals draw performers from across India.

Roads and railways connect Thanjavur to Tiruchirappalli, which has the nearest airport, and to Kumbakonam, Madurai and Chennai. The town is compact enough to explore on foot or by autorickshaw, and it makes an excellent base for visiting the many temple towns of the delta.

Tamil University, established here in 1981, specialises in Tamil language, literature and culture, and there are medical, engineering and arts colleges as well.

Thanjavur is important as a living museum of Tamil civilisation, where a thousand year old temple still functions as a place of worship at the heart of a working city.