Two layers, one wall.

For about six hundred years between the late thirteenth century and the early 1930s, the eleventh-century murals on the inner ambulatory walls of Brihadeeswara were invisible. They were not lost — the temple had been continuously occupied, and the wall was right there — but they were buried under a later layer of paint, applied by the Nayak custodians of the temple in the sixteenth century. The discovery, in 1931, of the earlier program beneath the later one is one of the great archaeological events of Indian art history.

What was found was the largest single body of Chola-period mural painting that survives anywhere — fragmentary, partly damaged, but unmistakeably eleventh-century, and executed in a confident, fully formed style that owes nothing to either the Ajanta tradition or the contemporaneous painting of north India.

Where the paintings are.

The Chola frescoes occupy the inner ambulatory — the narrow circumambulatory passage that wraps around the sanctum, accessible from the inner hall. The passage runs around all four sides of the lingam-chamber, with the painted surface on the outer wall (the wall of the ambulatory furthest from the lingam) for the full length of the circuit. The paintings extend from approximately 0.8 m above the floor to about 3.5 m, finishing below a band of carved granite.

The total painted area in the original Chola program is approximately 240 square metres. Of that, roughly 65% has been documented, partly exposed, and stabilised; the remainder is still covered by the Nayak overpainting, which itself is now considered of substantial historical value and is left in place except in carefully chosen windows.

The 1931 discovery.

The discovery was incidental. In 1931 the ASI conservator S. K. Govindaswamy was directing a routine cleaning of the inner ambulatory walls when, in one section of the south passage, the surface layer of paint began to flake away under the cleaning. A second, older layer was visible beneath. Govindaswamy stopped the cleaning and reported the find to the Government Epigraphist for India, Hirananda Sastri.

A formal investigation followed in 1932 – 33. Test patches were carefully exposed in several locations around the ambulatory; in each case, beneath the Nayak-era paint, a much earlier and stylistically very different program was revealed. The findings were published by S. K. Govindaswamy in the ASI's Annual Report for 1933, with a detailed follow-up monograph by C. Sivaramamurti in 1939.

The Chola layer.

The eleventh-century layer is executed on fine lime-plaster, applied in two coats over the granite. The plaster is integral to the wall: it was applied when the wall was new, almost certainly within months of the temple's consecration in 1010. The pigments are mineral and organic — red and yellow ochre, lime white, lampblack, and a striking deep blue derived from lapis lazuli, imported from what is now Afghanistan via the Chola maritime networks.

The technique is true buon fresco in the western sense: pigment applied to wet plaster, chemically bonded as the plaster cures. This is technically demanding — the work must be completed in sections within a few hours, before the plaster sets — and is the same technique used for the Ajanta cave paintings half a millennium earlier. The Chola painters had inherited the technical tradition; what they had developed was a markedly more naturalistic figural style.

“The Brihadeeswara frescoes are the missing link in the South Indian painting tradition. They stand stylistically between the late Pallava cave paintings of Sittanavasal and the developed Vijayanagara mural tradition of Lepakshi — and demonstrate that the lineage was unbroken.”— C. Sivaramamurti, The Brihadisvara Paintings, ASI, 1939

The Nayak layer.

The Nayak layer was applied in the sixteenth century, almost certainly under the patronage of Achyutappa Nayak (r. 1564 – 1614). It is applied directly over the Chola paint, without an intermediate plaster bed, using a different palette: brighter vermilion, more saturated blues (synthetic ultramarine), and substantial use of gold leaf. The figural style is denser, flatter and more decorative than the Chola underlayer, with the dark line drawing and surface ornament characteristic of late Vijayanagara painting.

The Nayak repainting almost certainly happened because the original Chola paint had deteriorated and was considered visually unsatisfactory by the sixteenth-century custodians. Rather than restore the original, they painted over it — a common intervention in pre-modern temple practice across India.

What is depicted.

The Chola program is iconographically rich and narratively coherent. The principal subjects are: Shiva in various forms (Tripurantaka destroying the three demonic cities; Nataraja in cosmic dance; Bhikshatana the alms-seeker; Daksinamurti the teacher); the story of the saint Sundarar and his patroness Paravai; courtly scenes including dancers, musicians and a magnificent royal procession that may depict Raja Raja Chola himself.

The Nayak overpainting follows a somewhat different program. The Saiva narratives are retained but supplemented with episodes from the puranic literature: the marriage of Shiva and Parvati, the descent of the Ganga, various scenes from the Skanda Purana. The overall iconographic logic is similar but the emphasis has shifted toward narrative elaboration.

Conservation since 1933.

The ASI has run intermittent conservation campaigns on the frescoes since the discovery: a first campaign in 1933 – 36, a second in 1953 – 57, a third in 1995 (in coordination with Pichard's structural survey), and the most extensive in the 2007 – 12 millennium programme. The current approach is to stabilise the visible Chola layer with reversible barrier coatings, control the ambulatory microclimate (temperature and humidity), and accept the limits of what can be exposed without destroying the Nayak layer above.

In a small number of carefully chosen “windows” — typically about 1 m square — the Nayak layer has been completely removed to expose the Chola fresco beneath. These windows are documented and form the bulk of what visitors see today as “the Chola paintings”.

What you can see today.

The inner ambulatory is open to visitors but with restrictions. The passage is narrow, the lighting is dim (a deliberate conservation choice), and photography with flash is prohibited. The most accessible Chola fresco panel — a window showing the Tripurantaka narrative — is on the south wall of the ambulatory, approximately twenty metres from the inner hall entrance.

Allow about thirty minutes to see the principal painted sections at an unhurried pace. The ambulatory closes during the midday pooja interval (12:30 – 16:00). For best viewing, time your visit for mid-morning, when the inner courtyard light is bright enough to provide reflected illumination through the ambulatory's small openings.

Further reading

• C. Sivaramamurti, The Brihadisvara Paintings, ASI, 1939 — the definitive early monograph.
• S. R. Balasubrahmanyam, Middle Chola Temples, Thomson Press, 1975 — for the painting program in context.
• ASI, Brihadeeswara Temple — Conservation Programme 2007 – 12, official report — for the modern conservation policy.
• Vidya Dehejia, Art of the Imperial Cholas, Columbia, 1990 — for the iconographic framework.