“The Voice Of The Cholas Returns From Leiden — Let’s Hear What It Says”, Swarajya, May 18, 2026
“On 16 May 2026, in The Hague, the Dutch government formally returned to India a bundle of twenty-one copper plates, threaded on a heavy bronze ring stamped with the tiger-fish-bow seal of the Cholas. The object weighs about thirty kilograms.
It is, in effect, the world’s heaviest book. Engraved in the opening years of the eleventh century during the reign of Rajaraja Chola I and completed under his son Rajendra, the Anaimangalam Tamra Sasanam — the so-called Larger Leiden Plates — had left the Coromandel coast around 1700.
The plates were carried to the Netherlands in 1712 by a pastor, sat in private hands for 150 years, and were gifted to Leiden University in 1862. The exact circumstances under which the pastor acquired the Chola Plates are uncertain. They were likely stolen…….”
Read full article at swarajyamag.com
