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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 23, p. 242.

242 TAN. JORE TAL UK resembling those of the Pattukkottai tdluk. These two tracts are sharply contrasted, and the hiluk contains some of the best land in the District and also large tracts of the worst. There is more ` dry' land than irrigated, and 47 per cent. of the former is assessed at R. i an acre or less. Rice is more widely grown even here than any other crop; but a large area is under cambu, rdgi, ground-nuts, and red gram, the last of which is an unusual grain in this District. Tanjore City (Tanjdvur).-Head-quarters of the District and tdluk of the same name in Madras, situated in 10'47' N. and 79' 8' E., on the main line of the South Indian Railway, 218 miles from Madras and 226 from Tuticorin. The population in 1871 was 52,175; in 1881, 54745; in 1891, 54,390; and in 1901, 57,87o. Tanjore now ranks as the eighth largest town in the Presidency. Eighty-five per cent. of the population are Hindus, there being only 3,6oo Musalmans, 4,796 Christians, and 154 Jains. Tanjore was successively the capital of the Chola, Naik, and Maratha powers. It stood a siege by Chanda Sahib and the French in 1749, and by the French under Lally in 1758, and was afterwards captured by Colonel Joseph Smith in 1773, though it was restored in 1776 to the Maratha Raja. In 1799, when Sara- bhoji, the Raja of Tanjore, ceded his territory to the British by treaty, he retained the city in his own hands. It lapsed to the British Government in 1855 on the death of his son, Sivaji, without heirs. Four surviving queens, besides other members of the family, still occupy the palace in the centre of the fort. There are two halls in this palace, known as the Maratha and Naik Darbar Halls, in the latter of which stands a statue of Sarabhoji by Chantrey. The building also contains an armoury, and a library of 22,000 volumes in several Indian and European languages, principally Sanskrit. Within the great fort, now dismantled, is a smaller erection called the Sivaganga fort. It encloses the sacred Sivaganga tank and the famous Brihadiswaraswami temple. The inscriptions on the walls of the latter ascribe its construction to the Chola king, Rajaraja I, in the eleventh century. It is built on a well-defined and stately plan, which was persevered with till its completion, an unusual feature in Dravidian temples. It consists of two courts, of which the first, originally devoted to minor shrines and residences, was converted into an arsenal by the French in 1772, and has not been reappropriated to sacred purposes. The temple proper stands in the second courtyard, sur mounted by a tower Zoo feet high. The carvings on this tower are all Vaishnavite, but everything in the courtyard, as well as the idol itself, is Saivite. Strangely enough, there is a figure on the northern side of the tower which appears to be that of a European, the popular expla- nation of which anachronism is that the eleventh-century architect foresaw the advent'of the British. In front of the temple is a huge