Place · Bhonsale royal palace · India
Thanjavur Maratha palace
The Thanjavur Maratha palace in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, built as a Bhonsale Maratha royal residence from 1674 when Venkoji (Shivaji's half-brother) took the city from the Thanjavur Nayaks and established the Thanjavur Maratha kingdom (1674-1856). The palace complex holds the Saraswathi Mahal Library (one of the oldest surviving libraries in Asia, with over 60,000 palm-leaf and 40,000 paper manuscripts from the Nayaka and Maratha eras, expanded hugely under Serfoji II 1798-1832 who collected European printed books and medical atlases), the Art Gallery with Chola bronzes, and the Durbar Hall with its wooden painted ceiling. UNESCO Memory of the World Register since 1997 for the Serfoji collection. The palace is ASI-protected.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 10.787, 79.137
Connections (6)
- Shared site withThanjavur Saraswathi Mahal
The Saraswathi Mahal library occupies part of the Thanjavur Maratha palace, and the collection is largely the work of Serfoji II, who ruled under British protection with no army and spent the resulting leisure and money on books — Sanskrit, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu manuscripts, plus European printed works on medicine and music. It is one of the few Indian princely libraries that survived intact into the twentieth century.
- Trade routeKaraikal
Karaikal was purchased in 1739 from Pratap Singh, the Maratha raja of Thanjavur, who needed cash and French artillery against Arcot and the Nawab's claims. The transaction put a French customs post in the richest rice delta in the south, and it is a reminder that European enclaves were usually bought from Indian rulers rather than conquered from them.
- Patronage networkTranquebar (Tharangambadi)
Tranquebar's lease came from Thanjavur and its rent was paid to Thanjavur for two centuries, through the Nayaka dynasty and then the Marathas who displaced them in 1674. Serfoji II, the Maratha raja educated by the Tranquebar missionary Schwartz, built a library at his palace, subscribed to European science and had Danish-printed Tamil books in it.
- TransmissionHampi / Vijayanagara
When Vijayanagara was sacked in 1565 its craftsmen, painters and temple architects dispersed to the Nayaka courts that had governed for it, and Thanjavur is where most of that inheritance settled. Vijayanagara sculptural convention, bronze casting by lost wax, wood carving and decorative stucco all continue there, and the Nayaka court developed temple mural painting furthest of all — an imperial vocabulary carried on by its own former provincial governors.
- Craft tradition ofThanjāvūr painting
Thanjavur painting — gesso relief, gold leaf and set glass stones on wood — was developed under the Marathas who took the city from the Nayakas in 1674, on top of the mural tradition the Nayakas had built out of Vijayanagara practice. The panel painting and the wall painting are one lineage in two formats, and the palace holds both along with the Saraswathi Mahal library.
- Site adjacencyThanjavur Brihadishvara
The Thanjavur Maratha palace, the eighteenth-century seat of the Bhonsle Thanjavur Marathas, stands north of the Brihadishvara temple inside the fort walls of Thanjavur city; the two are the twin monuments of the old capital but the palace is a separate precinct from the Chola temple.
Sources
History of India — Wikipedia
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