हिंदीOn this day

Nayakas of Thanjavur

Four Nayaka kings ruled the Kaveri delta from Thanjavur for about 140 years, beginning as Vijayanagara governors. With their great minister Govinda Dikshita they made the delta a centre of music and learning, and built the core of the Thanjavur palace.

  1. Sevappa Nayakac. 1532–1580
  2. Achyutappa Nayakac. 1560–1614
  3. Raghunatha Nayakac. 1600–1634
  4. Vijayaraghava Nayakac. 1634–1673
Period: c. 1532–1673 CERegion: The Kaveri delta, the old Chola heartlandCapitals: Thanjavur
Photo: பிரயாணி · CC BY-SA 4.0

01Sevappa and Govinda Dikshita

Sevappa Nayaka was given the Thanjavur country by the Vijayanagara emperor Achyuta Raya, whose queen’s sister he had married. His minister Govinda Dikshita served three generations of the house. Govinda Dikshita built the sixteen mandapams around the Mahamaham tank at Kumbakonam, where pilgrims bathe once in twelve years when Jupiter enters Simha, and endowed the temples of the delta. His son Venkatamakhi wrote the Chaturdandi Prakashika, which set out the seventy-two melakarta scheme of ragas used in Carnatic music to this day.

02Raghunatha’s court

Raghunatha Nayaka, the greatest of the line, fought for the Vijayanagara emperor at the battle of Toppur in 1616 and won. He was himself a musician who devised new ragas and talas, and a poet in Sanskrit and Telugu. His court poet Ramabhadramba, a woman, wrote the Raghunathabhyudayam about his life, and Yajnanarayana Dikshita, Govinda Dikshita’s son, wrote the Sahitya Ratnakara. In 1620 Raghunatha let the Danes settle at Tranquebar on the coast.

Kasi Viswanathar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Karonam)
Place · Present masonry Nayaka, 16th century; western gopuram of seven tiersKasi Viswanathar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Karonam)The temple on the Mahamaham tank where the nine sacred rivers, Ganga first, come to wash away the sins they have taken from bathers. Sambandar sang it.Read →

03The fall of Thanjavur

Vijayaraghava Nayaka, a devout Vaishnava who spent much on Srirangam, ruled for nearly forty years but fell out with Madurai. In 1673 Chokkanatha Nayak of Madurai sent an army; Vijayaraghava and his son died in the fighting, and the women of the palace are said to have died rather than be taken. A surviving son sought help from Bijapur, and its general Ekoji Bhonsle, half-brother of Chhatrapati Shivaji, took Thanjavur in 1676 and founded the Maratha line that ruled the delta until 1855.

The rulers

  1. 1Sevappa NayakaFounder; Govinda Dikshita his ministerc. 1532–1580
  2. 2Achyutappa NayakaCo-ruled with his father at firstc. 1560–1614
  3. 3Raghunatha NayakaVictor at Toppur; musician-kingc. 1600–1634
  4. 4Vijayaraghava NayakaKilled when Madurai took Thanjavurc. 1634–1673

What they left

  • The sixteen mandapams of the Mahamaham tank, Kumbakonam
  • Venkatamakhi’s seventy-two melakarta scheme of ragas
  • The Nayaka darbar hall of the Thanjavur palace
  • Raghunathabhyudayam and Sahitya Ratnakara

People

Chhatrapati Shivaji MaharajRuler
1630–1680 CE; crowned 1674

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj

Founder of Hindavi Swarajya, crowned Chhatrapati

Places

Kasi Viswanathar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Karonam)Standing
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Kasi Viswanathar Temple, Kumbakonam (Kudanthai Karonam)

The temple on the Mahamaham tank where the nine sacred rivers, Ganga first, come to wash away the sins they have taken from bathers. Sambandar sang it.

Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, SrirangamStanding
Cholas and the Southern Seas

Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam

The first of the 108 Divya Desams, on an island between the Kaveri and Kollidam, with seven concentric walls and 21 gopurams. Ramanujacharya lived and taught here.

Brihadeeswara Temple, ThanjavurStanding
Cholas and the Southern Seas

Brihadeeswara Temple, Thanjavur

Rajaraja Chola’s Rajarajeshvaram, finished in the 25th year of his reign, with a granite vimana about 66 m high. A thousand years on, its walls still carry the king’s own record of every gift and every servant of the temple.

Bhuvaraha Swamy Temple, SrimushnamStanding
Cholas and the Southern Seas

Bhuvaraha Swamy Temple, Srimushnam

One of the eight Swayam Vyakta kshetras of Vishnu, where Bhagwan as the Varaha who lifted the Earth from the ocean is held to have appeared of himself.

Kumbakonam and the Mahamaham tankStanding
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Kumbakonam and the Mahamaham tank

The temple town where the pot of amrita came to rest after the pralaya. Every twelve years, at the Mahamaham, the holy rivers of Bharat are said to bathe in its tank.