Velachery
Velachery is a residential area in southern Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. The growth of the neighbourhood during the last decade can be cited due to the growth of the IT sector in south Chennai, it acts as an important hub connecting the growing business-class information technology corridor popularly called the OMR. Velachery as a whole draws a perfect balance between old and new Chennai and is a phenomenon in terms of growth and development; the rapid growth of Velachery as a commercial and residential hub, could be attributed to its geographical advantage in terms of the connectivity to other parts of the city: The Velachery main road on the south, connects the fastest growing suburbs of south Chennai and Mount Road at Guindy via Velachery. A section of this road is home to some of the oldest localities; the 100 ft bypass road connects Guindy on the north west. The Taramani link road on the north east connects Velachery with Rajiv Gandhi Salai; the Jawaharlal Nehru Salai called the 100 ft road or Inner Ring Road, Chennai passes along the MRTS line and connects near the airport the GST road, an arterial road in Chennai.
The Taramani Link Road in Velachery connects to MGR Salai, an arterial road that connects to OMR Velachery comes under the Taluk of Mambalam-Guindy in Chennai District. In recentMambalam-Guindy Taluk has been divided Velachery got their own Taluk named as Velachery Taluk. A report by Cushman & Wakefield has projected this locality to be one among the Main Street retail hubs in the city. Dandeeswarar Temple is the oldest temple in the locality. Velachery has it origin in the Tamil words வேளர் or வேளிர் and the word சேரி which means a community. Before its name origin, Velachery was known as Vedasirani meaning a place where vedas were taught and enchanted. Velachery had existed as a village from as far back as 9th century earlier. Multiple kalvettu epigraphs confirm that the area was contemporary to other historical townships in the Tondaimandalam region of Tamilakam; the oldest kalvettus in Velachery are in the ancient Selliamman temple from the reigns of Parakesarivarman/Parantaka Chola and Parthivendravarman.
The Dhandeeswaram temple contains many epigraphs from the times of Gandaraditya Chola and emperors Raja Raja Chola I and Rajendra Chola I. During the 12th century, along with the rest of Tondaimandalam, was thought to have come under the rule of the Kadavas who were feudatory powers under the Cholas and subsequent Pandya emperors. An epigraph from king Kopperunjingan I of Sendamangalam of South Arcot region is found in Velachery; as in other contemporary Madras regions, the Velachery epigraphs attest to the remarkable system of local administration systems under Pallavas and Cholas of Tamilakam. There was harmonious functioning of the institutions of central government along vast network of village'sabaikal'/'sabhas' or assemblies which enjoyed considerable local autonomy and which were the real guardians of villages; the functioning of the sabaikal in places like Velachery, Thirumazhisai and Padi are well attested, with their composition of village elders and learned members of the community, maintaining law order, levying taxes and ensuring the functioning of the economy.
However, under the subsequent Vijayanagara empire and their feudatories, the power of the local assemblies seems to have progressively declined in favour of more centralized rule. The Velachery kalvettus mention instances of an Alanganattar family donation to the Dhandeeswaram temple, of two people buying land from the sabai and donating them to the temple. Contemporary accounts from Kavanur near Tiruvottiyur describe how the village assemblies receiving money from individuals and agreeing to pay interest on it, it is clear that the village assemblies possessed the right of buying and disposing of land or other categories of properties owned jointly by the villagers for them and on their behalf. A Chola record from Velachery mentions a Council of Justice, called Dharmasana, presided by the King and assisted by learned Brahmins, called Dharmasanabhattars. Lesser cases were decided by local courts named as Nyayattar. In the epigraphs, some parts of the Velachery village were known as Dinachintamani Chaturvedimangalam in honor of land grants given to Brahmins for teaching the four Vedas..
In such Brahmadeya villages or Agarams, the lands were held by the village in common on a tenure system known as Ganabhogam, cultivated under joint ownership by the community and the profits shared in proportion to the share held on the land. Another kalvettu mentions a sale of land by non-Brahmins with the permission of king Rajendra Chola I, indicating that non-Brahmins held land in the Brahmadeya villages; as Madras/Chennai city expanded in the late 20th century, Velachery became one of the prime residential neighbourhoods of Chennai. The American Advent Mission School has been functioning since the 1950s; the transformation of Velachery happened with the widening of Bypass Road in 2005 to a six-laned road, which gave ample opportunities for builders to commercially exploit the place. Velachery is surrounded by IIT Madras in the north-east, Taramani in the east, Adambakkam in the northwest and Pallikaranai Marshland in the south. Most of the neighborhood is r
Descent of the Ganges (Mahabalipuram)
Descent of the Ganges is a monument at Mamallapuram, on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal, in the Kancheepuram district of the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Measuring 96 by 43 feet, it is a giant open-air rock relief carved on two monolithic rock boulders; the legend depicted in the relief is the story of the descent of the sacred river Ganges to earth from the heavens led by Bhagiratha. The waters of the Ganges are believed to possess supernatural powers; the descent of the Ganges and Arjuna's Penance are portrayed in stone at the Pallava heritage site. The relief is more of a canvas of Indian rock cut sculpture at its best not seen anywhere in India, it is one of the Group of Monuments at Mamallapuram that were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984. The Arjuna relief is in the centre of Mahabalipuram, facing the sea at a short distance from the shores of the Coramandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal where the Shore Temple is situated, it is accessible from Chennai city over a 36 miles paved road to its west and 20 miles from Chengalpet.
The relief was created to celebrate the victory of Narasimhavarman 1 over Chalukiya king Pulakesin 2. The place, now known as Mamallapuram, was earlier known by the epithet given to the king Narasimhavarman I of the Pallava Dynasty,) as Mamallan, the "great wrestler" or "great warrior" who came in the Malla dynasty, his father was king Mahendravarman I. The architectural creations at Mamallapuram attributed to Mamalla in the 7th century, adopted stone as the medium for sculpting in situ rock faces, which until was done with some perishable material like wood or loose stones, it is part of 25 UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Sites in India, as a protected monument, the Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai Circle is entrusted with its upkeep in all aspects. The open air reliefs (including the Descent of the Ganges are one of the four categories under which UNESCO identified the site as a World Heritage Site and inscribed it in 1984 under the title Group of Monuments at Mahabalipuram; this relief in rock is reported as a "sublime" early sculpture of the 7th century.
This architectural legacy of the Pallava dynasty is continued by the descendants of sculptors of that period, who are now integrated into the present town's culture. The relief faces east, it was created with great skill and imagination on two large boulders of pink granite in the open air giving the whole a natural effect. The boulders measure 15 by 30 metres. Many of the figures carved are in life size; the natural cleft, a large perpendicular fissure, is skilfully sculptured. It is in between the two boulders and is integral to the mythical narratives carved on the entire relief. A water tank was once located at the top of the rock to release water denoting the Ganges River, it cascaded over the cleft and the relief to give the impression of the Ganga descending from the head tied matts of Shiva. This scene was created during festive occasions and the presence of a brick masonry cistern at the top of the cleft to release water attests to its location at site; the relief is an ensemble of over a hundred figures of gods, half-humans and animals and is best explained by an expert at site.
The sculptures carved in the natural fissure that divides the cliff not only depict a cosmic event of Ganges descending to earth at the command of Shiva but shows the event being watched by scores of gods, mythical figurines of Kinnara, Apsara, Gana and wild and domestic animals, all admiringly looking up at the scene. This relief is given the hyperbole adjectives as "world renowned" and "unique artistic achievement"; the total number of carvings are about 146. The carvings of elephants are life size. Another humorous scene is the carvings of monkeys copying the yogic scenes of the sages. Shiva is shown next to the Kinnaras who are depicted in large numbers in the upper portion of the relief; the male Kinnara is holding a musical instrument. Shiva is carved in front of the river in a standing posture with Bhagiratha, the sage, standing on one leg offering him prayers to check the force of the Ganga as she descends to earth. Shiva is shown with a weapon, interpreted as Pashupati, which he gave to Arjuna.
The ganas shown in the carvings represent the people who have spent their entire lives in dedication to Shiva, are blessed with the boon to remain close to Shiva for all time to come. Carvings of the divine nagas shown swimming in the river, as Ganga descends from the heavens, are in anthropomorphic form of a serpent and human, a traditional style from ancient times in Indic art, they are believed to denote fertility and protective forces of nature. They are seen not only in the middle of the panel facing the cleft, which represents the river, but at the top of the panel at the entry of water over the channel, marking the prevalence of naga worship in Hindu religious beliefs, it is said that the relief in one unity is the early Indic artist's concept of "sublime continuity in all living things." The elephants shown in reliefs are unique in the fact that the detailing includes the baby elephants behind the life size elephants. Another interesting depiction is of a deer scratchin
Chengalpattu
Chengalpattu is a town in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, India. It is the headquarters of the Chengalpattu Taluk of the district and is 55 kilometres southwest of the state capital, Chennai and 22 km Away from Chennai City Entrance Gateway Chennai Vandalur on the National Highway 45. Chengalpattu Railway Station, technically known as CGL, is one of the major railway junctions of the Southern Railway and is a nationally important halt. Chengalpattu Government Hospital is the largest government hospital in this district; the Hospital has its own medical college. The town has the principal court of the district, Dr. Ambedhkar Law College; the city is believed to have been named after a lily called'chenkazhuneer poo', found aplenty in the region. It is on the Palar River about 56 km southwest of Chennai city. Chengalpattu is an important commercial center, it has other colleges affiliated with the University of Madras. In 2011, the town had a population of 62,579; as of now the current population is up to 65,695.
Chengalpattu was a capital of the kings of Vijayanagara, after their defeat by the Deccan sultanates at Battle of Talikota in 1565. In 1639 a local governor or nayak, subject to these kings, granted a piece of coastal land to the British East India Company where Fort St George now stands, which became the nucleus of the city of Madras; the fortress at Chengalpattu, built by the Vijayanagara kings in the 16th century, was of strategic importance, owing to its swampy surroundings and the lake that flanked its side. Chengalpattu was taken by the French in 1751 and was retaken in 1752 by Robert Clive, after which it proved of great strategic advantage to the British when Lally failed to capture the fortress in his advance on Madras. During the wars of the British with Hyder Ali of Mysore, it withstood his assault and afforded a refuge to the nearby residents. In 1780, after the defeat of Colonel W Baillie, the army of Sir Hector Munro took refuge there. By 1900 the town was noted for its manufacture of pottery and was a local market center of the rice trade.
The surrounding district was home to cotton and silk weaving, indigo dyeing, a cigar factory, extensive salt manufacturing took place along the coast. Chengalpattu is located at 12.7°N 79.98°E / 12.7. It has an average elevation of 36 metres. Lake Kolavai is the largest located in Chengalpattu. According to 2011 census, Chengalpattu had a population of 62,579 with a sex-ratio of 1,020 females for every 1,000 males, much above the national average of 929. A total of 5,884 were under the age of six, constituting 3,045 males and 2,839 females. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes accounted for 15.55% and 1.44% of the population respectively. The average literacy of the town was 83.25%, compared to the national average of 72.99%. The town had a total of 15675 households. There were a total of 23,937 workers, comprising 264 cultivators, 215 main agricultural labourers, 475 in house hold industries, 19,376 other workers, 3,607 marginal workers, 127 marginal cultivators, 66 marginal agricultural labourers, 175 marginal workers in household industries and 3,239 other marginal workers.
As per the religious census of 2011, Chengalpattu had 85.33% Hindus, 6.09% Muslims, 6.48% Christians, 0.02% Sikhs, 0.13% Buddhists, 0.13% Jains, 1.79% following other religions and 0.02% following no religion or did not indicate any religious preference. Various educational institutions are in Chengalpattu like schools, engineering colleges, Medical colleges and Arts/Science colleges. Rajeswari Vedachalam Govt Arts College Vidyasagar Women's College Government Law College, Chengalpattu Asan Memorial College of Engineering and Technology Indra Gandhi Women's College of Engineering Karpaga Vinayaga College of Engineering and Technology Shri Andal Alagar College of Engineering Chengalpet Government Medical College Karpaga Vinayaga Institute of Medical Science Asan Memorial Dental College and Hospital Karpaga Vinayaga Institute of Dental Science Karpaga Vinayaga Institute of Nursing Swamy Vivekananda Vidhyalaya Matric School, Chengalpattu Sri Ramakrishna Boys. Hr. Sec.school. Seventh Day Adventist Matric.
Hr. Sec. School, Chengalpattu Blessings Matric Hr. Sec. School. Brindhavan Public School. CSI Alison Cassie Girls Higher Secondary School. CSI St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's Matric Hr. Sec. School. Government Girls Hr. Sec. School. Guardian International Nursery School. Little Jacky Matric. Hr. Sec. School. Maharishi Vidhya Mandir School. Mahindra World School. Prasan Vidhya Mandir School. Shri Ramakrishna Mission Boys Hr. Sec. School. Shri Ramakrishna Mission Girls Hr. Sec. School. St. Columba's Hr. Sec. School. CSI St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's Matric. Hr. Sec. School. St. Joseph's Higher Secondary School, Chengalpattu St. Joseph's Matric. Hr. Sec. School. St. Mary's Girls Hr. Sec. School. St. Mary's Primary School. St. Paul's Academy. St. Paul's Matriculation School. SCAD World School. St. Ann's Matric Hr. Sec. School. Vidhya Sagar Global School. Oviya School of Music Lefort Dental Hospital. Beent Hospital. Chengalpattu Medical College Government Leprosy Hospital. JJ Hospital. JSP Hospital. Sree Renga Nursing Home. Venkat Ramana Hospital. Balaji Hospital.
Chandeep Scans & Diagnostic There are numerous Temples and churches in the city of Chengalpattu where people visit according to their beliefs. Perumal Temple Ramar Temple Kottai Veera Anchaneyar Temple: Powerful god for health and business Hayagreevar Temple: It situated at Chettipunniyam. Special for Education and Business Mallikeshwarar Temple: It's situated at Daka Nagar, Near Hayagreevar temple and Mahindra World City. You can find a big size Lingam for worship. Specially for Business people and newly married couples. You can get. Nawab Jamia
Mahabharata
The Mahābhārata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes and their succession. Along with the Rāmāyaṇa, it forms the Hindu Itihasa; the Mahābhārata is an epic legendary narrative of the Kurukṣetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pāṇḍava princes. It contains philosophical and devotional material, such as a discussion of the four "goals of life" or puruṣārtha. Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, the story of Ṛṣyasringa considered as works in their own right. Traditionally, the authorship of the Mahābhārata is attributed to Vyāsa. There have been many attempts to unravel compositional layers; the oldest preserved parts of the text are thought to be not much older than around 400 BCE, though the origins of the epic fall between the 8th and 9th centuries BCE.
The text reached its final form by the early Gupta period. According to the Mahābhārata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses called Bhārata; the Mahābhārata is the longest epic poem known and has been described as "the longest poem written". Its longest version consists of over 100,000 śloka or over 200,000 individual verse lines, long prose passages. At about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahābhārata is ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa. W. J. Johnson has compared the importance of the Mahābhārata in the context of world civilization to that of the Bible, the works of William Shakespeare, the works of Homer, Greek drama, or the Quran. Within the Indian tradition it is sometimes called the Fifth Veda; the epic is traditionally ascribed to the sage Vyāsa, a major character in the epic. Vyāsa described it as being itihāsa, he describes the Guru-shishya parampara, which traces all great teachers and their students of the Vedic times.
The first section of the Mahābhārata states that it was Gaṇeśa who wrote down the text to Vyasa's dictation. The epic employs the story within a story structure, otherwise known as frametales, popular in many Indian religious and non-religious works, it is first recited at Takshashila by the sage Vaiśampāyana, a disciple of Vyāsa, to the King Janamejaya, the great-grandson of the Pāṇḍava prince Arjuna. The story is recited again by a professional storyteller named Ugraśrava Sauti, many years to an assemblage of sages performing the 12-year sacrifice for the king Saunaka Kulapati in the Naimiśa Forest; the text was described by some early 20th-century western Indologists as chaotic. Hermann Oldenberg supposed that the original poem must once have carried an immense "tragic force" but dismissed the full text as a "horrible chaos." Moritz Winternitz considered that "only unpoetical theologists and clumsy scribes" could have lumped the parts of disparate origin into an unordered whole. Research on the Mahābhārata has put an enormous effort into recognizing and dating layers within the text.
Some elements of the present Mahābhārata can be traced back to Vedic times. The background to the Mahābhārata suggests the origin of the epic occurs "after the early Vedic period" and before "the first Indian'empire' was to rise in the third century B. C." That this is "a date not too far removed from the 8th or 9th century B. C." is likely. Mahābhārata started as an orally-transmitted tale of the charioteer bards, it is agreed that "Unlike the Vedas, which have to be preserved letter-perfect, the epic was a popular work whose reciters would conform to changes in language and style," so the earliest'surviving' components of this dynamic text are believed to be no older than the earliest'external' references we have to the epic, which may include an allusion in Panini's 4th century BCE grammar Aṣṭādhyāyī 4:2:56. It is estimated that the Sanskrit text reached something of a "final form" by the early Gupta period. Vishnu Sukthankar, editor of the first great critical edition of the Mahābhārata, commented: "It is useless to think of reconstructing a fluid text in a original shape, on the basis of an archetype and a stemma codicum.
What is possible? Our objective can only be to reconstruct the oldest form of the text which it is possible to reach on the basis of the manuscript material available." That manuscript evidence is somewhat late, given its material composition and the climate of India, but it is extensive. The Mahābhārata itself distinguishes a core portion of 24,000 verses: the Bhārata proper, as opposed to additional secondary material, while the Aśvalāyana Gṛhyasūtra makes a similar distinction. At least three redactions of the text are recognized: Jaya with 8,800 verses attributed to Vyāsa, Bhārata with 24,000 verses as recited by Vaiśampāyana, the Mahābhārata as recited by Ugraśrava Sauti with over 100,000 verses. However, some scholars, such as John Brockington, argue that Jaya and Bharata refer to the same text, ascribe the theory of Jaya with 8,800 verses to a misreading of a verse in Ādiparvan; the redaction of this large body of text was carried out after formal principles, emphasizing the numbers 18 and 12.
The addition of the latest parts may be dated by the absence of the Anuśāsana-parva and the Virāta parva from the "Spitzer manuscript". The oldest surviving
Broadway, Chennai
Broadway is one of the historical thoroughfares of the commercial centre of George Town in Chennai, India. The road runs north–south connecting China Bazaar Road in the south with Ibrahim Sahib Street in the north; the road divides George Town into Peddanaickenpet. Up until the 16th century, the road and the surrounding region, being near the coast, had many sand ridges; as the sea level rose, it inundated these regions, where several lagoons and ridges were left behind when the sea withdrew. The sandy ridges remained places of safety. Several valleys ran around the ridges; some of these valleys served as drainage channels. Until the late 18th century, the area on which the present day's road lies remained one such unwanted drainage channel, known as Atta Pallam. Much of the area was owned by Stephen Popham, a former British MP and the advocate general in Calcutta, who moved to Madras in 1778, he is credited with establishing a modern police force in the city in 1782. The area where the General Hospital, Madras United Club and the Park Town post office stand today was a hill known locally as Narimedu, named'Hoggs Hill' by the British.
When the British considered it as a security threat to Fort St. George and decided to level the area, Popham negotiated with them to buy the earth removed from the hill to fill the ditch; the thoroughfare thus created came to be known as'Popham's Broadway'. By the 1890s, the road became known for two food establishments, the first of, that of P. Venkatachellum, whose condiments and chutneys were popular in England, he is credited with the creation of mulligatawny soup from the local recipe of milagu rasam. The other restaurant was Harrison's, established in 1891, which today is a contemporary hotel in Nungambakkam; the road was home to the city's first private hospital run in the 1900s by physician T. A. Sankaranarayanan, decades before the advent of the Apollo Hospitals, the country's first modern corporate hospital, established in 1983. Today, the road has morphed into one of the most important commercial streets of George Town. Several commercial establishments those of opticians, have their shops on this street.
The Broadway bus terminus, the largest bus terminus of the Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation, is located on the southern end of the road. The road will house the Mannadi Metro Rail station of the Chennai Metro Rail under construction. Parry's Corner George Town Muthiah, S.. Madras Discovered. East West Books Pvt Ltd. p. 124
Rock relief
A rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are a category of rock art, sometimes found as part of, or in conjunction with, rock-cut architecture. However, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric peoples. A few such works exploit the natural contours of the rock and use them to define an image, but they do not amount to man-made reliefs. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures throughout human history, were important in the art of the ancient Near East. Rock reliefs are fairly large, as they need to be in order to have an impact in the open air. Most of those discussed here have figures that are over life-size, in many the figures are multiples of life-size. Stylistically they relate to other types of sculpture from the culture and period concerned, except for Hittite and Persian examples they are discussed as part of that wider subject.
Reliefs on near-vertical surfaces are most common, but reliefs on horizontal surfaces are found. The term excludes relief carvings inside caves, whether natural or themselves man-made, which are found in Indian rock-cut architecture. Natural rock formations made into statues or other sculpture in the round, most famously at the Great Sphinx of Giza, are usually excluded. Reliefs on large boulders left in their natural location, like the Hittite İmamkullu relief, are to be included, but smaller boulders may be called stelae or carved orthostats. Many or most ancient reliefs were originally painted, over a layer of plaster; the first requirement for a rock relief is a suitable face of stone. Most of the ancient Near East was well supplied with mountains offering many cliff faces. An exception was the land of Sumer, where all stone had to be imported over considerable distances, so the art of Mesopotamia only features rock relief around the edges of the region; the Hittites and ancient Persians were the most prolific makers of rock reliefs in the Near East.
The form is ignored by others. In the many commemorative stelae of Nahr el-Kalb, 12 kilometres north of Beirut, successive imperial rulers have carved memorials and inscriptions; the Ancient Egyptian, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian rulers include relief imagery in their monuments, while the Roman and Islamic rulers do not, nor more modern ones. Although prehistoric engraved petroglyphs are common in Egypt, in general the form is not a common one in Ancient Egyptian art, only possible in some parts of the country those away from the main centres of population, as Abu Simbel was. There are a group of figures surrounding an image of Mentuhotep II, who died in 2010 BC and was the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom. Before they were cut away and moved, the colossal figures outside the Abu Simbel temples were high reliefs. Other sculpture outside temples cut into the rock qualifies as rock reliefs; the reliefs at Nahr el-Kalb commemorate Rameses II, are at the furthest reach of his empire in modern Lebanon.
The Hittites were important producers of rock reliefs, which form a large part of the few artistic remains they have left. The Karabel relief of a king was seen by Herodotus, who mistakenly thought it showed the Egyptian Pharaoh Sesostris. This, like many Hittite reliefs, is near a road, but rather hard to see from the road. There are more than a dozen sites, most over 1000 metres in elevation, overlooking plains, near water; these were placed with an eye to the Hittite's relation to the landscape rather than as rulers' propaganda, signs of "landscape control", or border markers, as has been thought. They are at sites with a sacred significance both before and after the Hittite period, places where the divine world was considered as sometimes breaking through to the human one. At Yazılıkaya, just outside the capital of Hattusa, a series of reliefs of Hittite gods in procession decorate open-air "chambers" made by adding barriers among the natural rock formations; the site was a sanctuary, a burial site, for the commemoration of the ruling dynasty's ancestors.
It was a private space for the dynasty and a small group of the elite, unlike the more public wayside reliefs. The usual form of these is to show royal males carrying weapons holding a spear, carrying a bow over their shoulder, with a sword at their belt, they have attributes associated with divinity, so are shown as "god-warriors". The Assyrians took the form from the Hittites; the Neo-Assyrians recorded in other places, including metal reliefs on the Balawat Gates showing them being made, the carving of rock reliefs, it has been suggested that the main intended audience was the gods, the reliefs and the inscriptions that accompany them being of the nature of a "business report" submitted by the ruler. A canal system built by the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib to supply water to Nineveh was marked by a number of reliefs showing the king with gods. Other reliefs at the Tigris tunnel, a cave in modern Turkey believed to be the source of the river Tigris, are "a
Chariot
A chariot is a type of carriage driven by a charioteer using horses to provide rapid motive power. Chariots were used by armies as transport or mobile archery platforms, for hunting or for racing, as a conveniently fast way to travel for many ancient people; the word "chariot" comes from a loanword from Gaulish. A chariot of war or one used in military parades was called a car. In ancient Rome and some other ancient Mediterranean civilizations, a biga required two horses, a triga three, a quadriga four; the chariot was a fast, open, two-wheeled conveyance drawn by two or more horses that were hitched side by side, was little more than a floor with a waist-high guard at the front and sides. It was used for ancient warfare during the Bronze and Iron Ages; the critical invention that allowed the construction of light, horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel. The earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca. 2000 BC. The use of chariots peaked around 1300 BC. Chariots had lost their military importance by the 1st century AD, but chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century.
Horses were introduced to Transcaucasia at the time of the Kura-Araxes culture, beginning about 3300 BC. During the Kura-Araxes period, horses seem to become quite widespread, with signs of domestication; the domestication of the horse was an important step toward civilization. An increasing amount of evidence supports the hypothesis, that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes 4000-3500 BC; the invention of the wheel used in transportation most took place in Mesopotamia or the Eurasian steppes in modern-day Ukraine. Evidence of wheeled vehicles appears from the mid 4th millennium BC near-simultaneously in the Northern Caucasus, in Central Europe; the earliest vehicles may have been ox carts. Starokorsunskaya kurgan in the Kuban region of Russia contains a wagon grave of the Maikop Culture; the two solid wooden wheels from this kurgan have been dated to the second half of the fourth millennium. Soon thereafter the number of such burials in this Northern Caucasus region multiplied; as David W. Anthony writes in his book The Horse, the Wheel, Language, in Eastern Europe, the earliest well-dated depiction of a wheeled vehicle is on the Bronocice pot.
It is a clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker settlement in Swietokrzyskie Voivodeship in Poland. The oldest securely dated real wheel-axle combination in Eastern Europe is the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel; the earliest records of chariots are the arsenal inventories of the palatial centres in Mycenaean Greece, as described in Linear B tablets from the 15th-14th centuries BC. The tablets distinguish between "assembled" and "dismantled" chariots; the latter Greeks of the first millennium BC had a cavalry arm, the rocky terrain of the Greek mainland was unsuited for wheeled vehicles. In historical Greece the chariot was never used to any extent in war; the chariot retained a high status and memories of its era were handed down in epic poetry. Linear B tablets from Mycenaean palaces record large inventories of chariots, sometimes with specific details as to how many chariots were assembled or not; the vehicles were used in games and processions, notably for races at the Olympic and Panathenaic Games and other public festivals in ancient Greece, in hippodromes and in contests called agons.
They were used in ceremonial functions, as when a paranymph, or friend of a bridegroom, went with him in a chariot to fetch the bride home. Herodotus Reports that chariots were used in the Pontic–Caspian steppe by the Sigynnae. Greek chariots were made to be drawn by two horses attached to a central pole. If two additional horses were added, they were attached on each side of the main pair by a single bar or trace fastened to the front or prow of the chariot, as may be seen on two prize vases in the British Museum from the Panathenaic Games at Athens, Greece, in which the driver is seated with feet resting on a board hanging down in front close to the legs of the horses; the biga itself consists of a seat resting on the axle, with a rail at each side to protect the driver from the wheels. Greek chariots appear to have lacked any other attachment for the horses, which would have made turning difficult; the body or basket of the chariot rested directly on the axle connecting the two wheels. There was no suspension.
At the front and sides of the basket was a semicircular guard about 3 ft high, to give some protection from enemy attack. At the back the basket was open, making it easy to dismount. There was no seat, only enough room for the driver and one passenger; the reins were the same as those in use in the 19th century, were made of leather and ornamented with studs of ivory or metal. The reins were passed through rings attached to the collar bands or yoke, were long enough to be tied round the waist of the charioteer to allow for defense; the wheels and basket of the chariot were of wood, strengthened in places with bronze or iron. They had from tires of bronze or iron. Due to the spaced spokes, the rim of the chariot wheel was held in tension over comparatively large spans. Whilst this provi
Mamallapuram travel guide from Wikivoyage
