Brihadisvara Temple

"After the 1857 Indian Mutiny/Great Rebellion, European belief in their religious superiority became racial too. After the 1869 Suez Canal opening, British wives joined their husbands more regularly in India. It would have been even more unthinkable to follow Sir William Jones’s ‘out of India’ linguistic connection. Better to side-line this primitive, superstitious religion with its phallic lingums or Tantric Hindu, Chola temples filled with exquisite, elaborate carvings of explicit sexual positions, some with multiple partners. The architecture to be admired was not the early 11th-century, 216-foot temple in Tanjore or its exact replica at Cholaporam, the highest buildings in India at the time, each one of which moved more stone than the Giza pyramid. Instead the 200-times smaller Taj Mahal with its story of a doting, heartbroken husband, building a simple, marble mausoleum in memory of a beloved wife, fitted Victorian pious, sentimental family values far better. But it downgraded India’s important indigenous past, fleetingly glimpsed by Jones and his like. It still does and despite its self-indulgence, is far better-known than Tanjore or the magnificent ruins of 5th-century Nalanda University, one of many, some of which date back to Vedic times, but both far more historically important and architecturally deserving more fame and respect. As a result of these errors built on prejudice, the huge Vedic body of literature was studied in isolation to pre-1,500 BC Indian archaeology and early Indian history was sent down a cul-de-sac based on fictional events and ludicrous dating."