How a dynasty in India created a cultural and economic superpower

It’s 1000 CE – the heart of the Middle Ages.

Europe is in flux. The powerful nations we know today – like Norman-ruled England and the fragmented territories that will go on to become France – do not yet exist. Towering Gothic cathedrals have yet to rise. Aside from the distant and prosperous city of Constantinople, few great urban centres dominate the landscape.

Yet that year, on the other side of the globe, an emperor from southern India was preparing to build the world’s most colossal temple.

Completed just 10 years later, it was 216ft (66m) tall, assembled from 130,000 tonnes of granite: second only to Egypt’s pyramids in height. At its heart was a 12ft tall emblem of the Hindu god Shiva, sheathed in gold encrusted with rubies and pearls.

In its lamplit hall were 60 bronze sculptures, adorned with thousands of pearls gathered from the conquered island of Lanka. In its treasuries were several tonnes of gold and silver coins, as well as necklaces, jewels, trumpets and drums torn from defeated kings across India’s southern peninsula, making the emperor the richest man of the era.

He was called Raja-Raja, King of Kings, and he belonged to one of the most astonishing dynasties of the medieval world: the Cholas.

His family transformed how the medieval world worked – yet they are largely unknown outside India.

Prior to the 11th Century, the Cholas had been one of the many squabbling powers that dotted the Kaveri floodplain, the great body of silt that flows through India’s present-day state of Tamil Nadu.

But what set the Cholas apart was their endless capacity for innovation. By the standards of the medieval world, Chola queens were also remarkably prominent, serving as the dynasty’s public face.

Travelling to Tamil villages and rebuilding small, old mud-brick shrines in gleaming stone, the Chola dowager Sembiyan Mahadevi – Rajaraja’s great-aunt – effectively “rebranded” the family as the foremost devotees of Shiva, winning them a popular following.

Sembiyan prayed to Nataraja, a hitherto little-known form of Hindu god Shiva as the King of Dance, and all her temples featured him prominently.

The trend caught on. Today, Nataraja is one of the most recognisable symbols of Hinduism. But to the medieval Indian mind, Nataraja was…