The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India

The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India is a significant addition to the literature on the exquisite temple bronzes produced during the Chola period, a time of unparalleled creativity in the history of the Indian subcontinent. This publication accompanies a major traveling exhibition of the same name, organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. For more than four hundred years, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, the Chola dynasty was the dominant cultural, artistic, religious, and political force in south India. During the golden age of Chola rule, music and dance, poetry and drama, philosophy and religious thought, and the arts of sculpture, bronze-casting, jewelry-making, painting, and architecture reached new heights. The temple was the center of all activity, and the Cholas built and decorated some of the most impressive temples in south India. These were primarily Hindu, though Buddhist and Jain shrines were also supported by Chola royalty. Sometime prior to the beginning of the tenth century, south India witnessed a dramatic change in Hindu religious thought that had important consequences for Chola artists: devotees began to visualize their deities as having public personas not unlike those of human monarchs. Worshiped as living entities, the deities participated in a variety of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual rituals and festivities; to fulfill these functions, portable images were required. Thus were created the spectacular temple bronzes of south India.