September 1792: The Brihadisvara or Rajarajesvara Temple, built around AD 1000, has a main shrine with a pyramidal tower unusually capped with a domical capstone. A colossal statue of Shiva's Bull, Nandi, flanks the temple. Thomas Daniell commented that this "celebrated idol at Tanjore...[is] formed from a single block of stone...and of a kind not to be met but at a considerable distance from Tanjore; from which circumstance the natives are very much inclined to attribute something miraculous to the bringing of it thither".