We publish English-language editorial articles about the Brihadeeswara Temple at Thanjavur. The temple is a thousand-year-old building with a thousand-year-old documentary record; what we say about it should be as carefully sourced as the record warrants. The policy below is the working policy under which we publish.
Sourcing
Every substantive factual claim in our articles is checked against one or more of four classes of source.
- Primary inscriptional sources. The 107 plinth inscriptions of the temple, as edited and translated in the Epigraphical Survey of India's South Indian Inscriptions series (volumes II, III and XIX).
- Primary architectural surveys. Pierre Pichard, Tanjavur Brhadiśvara (École française d'Extrême-Orient, 1995); the ASI millennium re-survey of 2007–2010; the standard architectural histories.
- Standard scholarly literature. Burton Stein, A History of India; K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Cōḷas; George Michell, The Hindu Temple; Y. Subbarayalu, South India under the Cholas; Indira Peterson and Daud Ali on the Tamil literary tradition.
- Institutional sources. UNESCO World Heritage dossiers; ASI publications; Tamil Nadu HR&CE department circulars; the Reserve Bank of India commemorative-coin documentation.
Where a claim cannot be supported by one of these classes, we either omit it or flag it explicitly as popular tradition rather than established fact.
Fact-checking
Every article is fact-checked by an editor other than the author before publication. Numerical claims (heights, weights, dates, distances) are cross-checked against at least two independent sources. Quotations are checked against the original text; where the original text is in Tamil, Sanskrit, Marathi or a non-English European language, the translation is verified against published scholarly translations. We do not publish unsourced quotations.
Corrections
When we get something wrong, we correct it. Corrections are made promptly — within twenty-four hours of verification for factual errors, within seventy-two hours for more substantive corrections that require re-research. Each correction is logged with the article's last-updated date.
For corrections that materially change the meaning of an article, we add a dated correction notice at the head of the article. For minor corrections (typos, date-format consistency, broken links) we update silently. Every correction is tracked internally regardless of whether it is announced publicly.
To submit a correction, write to editorial@brihadeeswara.com. Please include the article URL, the specific claim, the proposed correction, and a source for the correction. We acknowledge corrections within five working days.
Conflicts of interest
The site earns affiliate commissions on bookings made through our tour-operator partner links (see our affiliate disclosure). These commissions do not influence editorial decisions. No operator pays for placement; the operators we recommend are operators we would recommend without compensation. The reverse is also true: we have declined commission offers from operators we would not recommend.
Our editorial team have no undisclosed personal, financial or institutional relationships with the temple administration, the ASI, the HR&CE department, or any organisation whose work we cover editorially. Where any of our writers have a relevant disclosable relationship (a paid consultancy on a museum project, for example), it is declared in their byline note.
AI and generative content
We use AI tools (large language models, transcription tools, translation aids) as research and drafting aids. We do not publish AI-generated copy as our editorial voice. Every article on the site is written and edited by named human authors. We do not use AI-generated imagery; all photography is licensed, commissioned, or in the public domain.
Independence
Brihadeeswara.com is independently owned and editorially independent. The site is not funded by, affiliated with, or controlled by the Archaeological Survey of India, the Government of Tamil Nadu, the temple administration, or any political, religious, or commercial organisation. We accept no editorial guidance from advertisers, tour operators or sponsors.
Standards we draw on
Where the standard is not specific to our subject, we draw on the editorial guidelines of the Society of Editors (UK), the journalistic ethics framework of the International Federation of Journalists, and the academic citation conventions of the South Asian Studies Association. These are working references rather than binding rules; our practice is the working practice of editorial publishing.