Itihasa made itihasya...

This is an interesting documentary on temples of south India particularly on the Cholas. It dwells in great lengths on the construction of the Vimana of the Brihadeswara Temple at Thanjavur. What is fascinating and impressive is the extent to which the film makers have gone in giving a very palpable feel of the temples - They try to recreate the process by which the huge granite blocks could have possibly been moved to built the vimana of the Brihadesvara temple. This documentary also underscores the fact how the Taj Mahal and the other Mughal monument which appealed a lot more to the British with their Victorian morality, eclipsed the temples of central and south India from popular imagination.

While it was commendable of Arvind Narayan Das to make D D Kosambi's seminal book into a documentary series, its rather sombre tone may not appeal to children (or even adults for that matter). Maybe the seriousness of the issues and themes raised merited such an approach - where history is not merely telling you something very empirical from the past but focusing more on the underlying forces and socio-economic processes that shape the more visible aspect of our past. But here we have this wonderful documentary on Mughals titled " The Mughal Empire " under the series called Warrior empires shown on the History Channel, which even as it focuses on empirical history makes for compelling viewing and offers very revealing insights into the way Mughals fought their war, the way they built their massive monuments and the 'class' they brought to the royal lifestyle.