Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian specializing in ancient and early medieval India. He is the author of Lords of the Deccan Southern India from the Chalukyas to the Cholas. He hosts two podcasts Echoes of India and YUDDHA The Indian Military History Podcast. Anirudh has won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman and the Tata Literature Live! Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award. He was an Open Mind of 2022 and on the New Indian Express40 Under 40 list. Anirudh was formerly editor at the MAP Academy,where he worked on the Encyclopedia of Indian Art. Prior to this,he was associate fellow at the Takshashila Institution. His work has received grants from Princeton University, the India Foundation for the Arts and the Museum of Art and Photography.
<p>The great empire of the Cholas was unexpected. It sprouted out of the blue in the Kaveri floodplain around 850 ce. Till then, the region had for centuries been dotted by self-governing village assemblies. From here,the Cholas established a vast empire,the first and only time an empire based in coastal South India was the dominant power of the subcontinent a perch usually occupied by the Deccan or northern India. The Cholas were as creative and imaginative as they were unexpected. They built stupendous temples the tallest freestanding structures on earth after the pyramids of Egypt. Chola queens popularized new forms of gods and worship, such as the iconic Nataraja and the singing of Tamil poems to deities. And they were spectacularly daring, raiding not just the powerful Deccan and North India but also Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. For a dynasty that was so influential and is so loved today its actual historical achievements were surprisingly forgotten by the late nineteenth century, for they had faded into myth and legend. In this book,the awardwinning historian Anirudh Kanisetti brings to life the world of the Cholas. Not just the world of kings and queens attended by generals and service retinue women but the stories of the little people,whose lives were buffeted by big events. What was life like on board a merchant vessel making its way from the Tamil coast to Southeast Asia and China?What kind of food was served at temples to devotees and to soldiers in times of war?What became of a landless peasant who murdered his brother in a fit of rage?Why did a noble woman commit sati holding a lemon over her head?Based on thousands of inscriptions and hundreds of secondary sources,this deeply researched book is not just a procession of dazzling kings and queens but also a portal that transports us to the peasant settlements of over a thousand years ago. In this book,Kanisetti crucially separates fact from fiction and tells us one of the most extraordinary stories in human history.</p>
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