Abstract

All Streets Lead to Temples:

Mapping Monumental Histories in Kanchipuram, ca. 8th – 12th centuries CE

Emma Natalya Stein

2017

This dissertation examines the transformation of the South Indian city of

Kanchipuram into a major cosmopolitan sacred center during the course of the

eighth through twelfth centuries. In this pivotal five hundred-year period,

Kanchipuram served as the royal capital for two major dynasties, the Pallavas and

then the Cholas. Both dynasties sponsored the production of prominent sacred

monuments built from locally sourced stone. These temples were crowned with

pyramidal towers, adorned with sculpted and painted figures of deities amid groves

and palatial landscapes, and elegantly ornamented with courtly Sanskrit and Tamil

inscriptions. Over time, the temples functioned as monumental statements of power,

sites of devotion, and municipal establishments where diverse social groups

negotiated their claims to political authority and economic prosperity. In

Kanchipuram, temples also played a crucial role in defining urban space by

demarcating the city’s center and borders, marking crucial junctions, and orienting

the gods towards avenues, hydraulic features, and royal establishments. As religious

monuments, they also fostered vibrant circuits of pilgrimage and travel that were

integrated with a broader Indian Ocean network.

The dissertation argues that the construction of temples fundamentally

shaped and reordered landscape. The four chapters, organized chronologically,

address the expanding geography of Kanchipuram and its widening sphere of

influence. The first two chapters trace the city’s shifting contours and the emergence

of a major pilgrimage route that led precisely through the urban core. The city was

radically reconfigured around this new central road, which functioned as a

processional pathway that created relationships between monuments both inside

the city and beyond its borders. The third chapter reveals patterns of movement

linking the city with its rural and coastal hinterland, and considers connections with

Southeast Asia. Temples in more remote areas disclose links to Kanchipuram

through their use of shared architectural forms, a standardized iconographic

program, and inscriptions that detail economic and political ties to the urban hub.

The fourth chapter focuses on colonial-era encounters with Kanchipuram and the

city’s role in the broader production of colonial knowledge. As a site of antiquarian

interest and military history, Kanchipuram was subject to competing narratives

about India. Whereas European officials and surveyors such as James Fergusson saw

in the city’s monuments India’s past glory and inevitable decline, other travelers

found no evidence of rupture or disrepair. I read these conflicting representations

against the grain to expose Kanchipuram’s continuity as a flourishing cosmopolitan

center. The dissertation’s goal is twofold. First, it documents Kanchipuram and

maps its monuments spatially and chronologically in relation to each other, the city,

and features of the natural environment. Second, it situates the temples within their

ritual and civic functions as agentive establishments that both served and fostered a

growing urban landscape.