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Hello and welcome to this very special empire where we are in person. We're together. We're on the same kind of sofa things. It doesn't happen often. Doesn't happen often.

Yeah, I know.

He's the Britain, India.

I'm the Indian in Britain.

I mean, that was the premise that we started this home. I'm here, I know. I know. And now I'm actually leaning. I've just noticed I'm leaning on my Essex roots. Whenever anyone asks me, what's your good name and where are you from?

I just say Essex just to see what happens.

The confusion that follows is something to behold.

Our very special guest, though, again, we're very lucky. We've got Anirud Ken Sity who's with us, who has been talking us through the Chola Empire. I love Sembian, who is this woman who you kind of teased us with, the Chola Queen, who puts them on the map. And you sort of tease this out that she creates something of brand Chola that didn't exist before. Tell us just a little

bit more about how that happens. What I find so fascinating about the Cholas is that there

are a thousand years away from us, but the way in which they rose and the way in which they

fell has a lot to do with very modern ideas.

And I think Sembian exemplifies the dynasty's successful development of a media strategy.

So, Nata Raja keep in mind was the Shiva, the king of dance, was not a god of the Kaveri floodplain.

He was a god of the swamp a little further north. So he was essentially

a blank canvas waiting to be picked up by a royal family and was associated with nobody else

other than the Cholas. The next big step of Sambian's strategy was that while earlier Chola

Queens only built one temple over the course of their lifetimes, Sambian built 12. And she chose these

temples to be in places where people are sure to see them. So something like selecting where your billboard is going to be based on who the maximum number of people are. And these were massive blingy affairs. We're not talking about sort of little humble things. We're talking about a huge statement. Well, no. Well, no. As's as big as they're going to become. How important?

Twenty-five, thirty feet tall. It's the men who follow who build the big temples. She plants the sea. It's the men have got something to prove. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. And here. Come again. So she's laying out the seeds of this sort of propaganda for her family. Yes. the new god that her family has brought.

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