Cōḻa Bronzes in the Context of the History and Culture of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

he region of the South of India and especially Tamil Nadu, or rather, the region dominated by the Tamil culture, has always been very rich in religious developments but in the last centuries of the first millennium AD it was especially prolific, being also an area where the Brahmanical and local cults intermingled. Brahmanical cults, often identified as orthodox and belonging to the external and sometimes invading Aryan culture, mixed with the rich local religious life connected with many local deities. The issue of Brahmanical culture and the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu, as a subject of research in itself[, does not fit within the scope of our presentation, but it should be noticed that this social group was not so consistent as one could expect and the direction