Dynastic History | Kampahareswarar Temple, Thirubuvanam — The Fourth Great Temple, Left Off the List

The last of the four large Chola royal temples stands beside the Kumbakonam–Mayiladuthurai road, and the record of who raised it is on its own south wall. The foundation inscription, cut on the wall of the central shrine and copied twice on the outer gateway, was registered by the Government of Madras epigraphists as numbers 190, 191 and 192 of 1907. It names a Kulottunga-Choladeva. Which Kulottunga the stone does not say; the reading placed on it is Kulottunga III, and the date usually given is 1176. S. R. Balasubrahmanyam ties the building to the king's third war against the Pandyas, after which he took the title Tribhuvanavira; the temple appears in the inscriptions as Tribhuvanaviresvaram.

The tower over the sanctum is tall in proportion to the gateway, the pattern the other three royal temples share. What is not shared is a separate shrine for Sarabhamurti, a form of Shiva developed late in the Chola period and shown subduing Narasimha — a claim about the standing of two gods, made by a court, in stone.

The epigraphists' registers for 1911 add two Tamil inscriptions on the same wall, from the reign of a later Pandya ruler, recording contracts with the urkaval, the watchmen of the village: the ordinary administration of the place carrying on under the dynasty that displaced its builders.

The World Heritage property called the Great Living Chola Temples comprises three temples — Thanjavur, Gangaikonda Cholapuram and Darasuram. This one, counted by the architectural literature as the fourth of the group, is not among them, though guides and temple listings sometimes place it there.

📸 Cover: The mandapa and the temple wall, with the repainted gopuram behind, Subramanian, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons