As India's economy goes from strength to strength, and more of the country’s north becomes suburban and developed, travelling in the rural south becomes more attractive. Around my farm on the outskirts of New Delhi, new neighbourhoods are springing up full of call centres, software companies and fancy apartment blocks, all rapidly rising on land that only two years earlier was still billowing winter wheat.

In contrast, whole swaths of the south remain oddly innocent, unchanged and relatively unvisited. There are no malls here; instead the villages are still like those in R. K. Narayan stories with roadside shops full of sacks of dried red chilli and freshly cut stalks of green bananas; buffaloes sun themselves on the sandbanks of the Cauvery River; goats wander in the streets; and cyclists wobble along red-dirt roads, past village duckponds and palm groves. The villagers leave their newly harvested grain on the road to be threshed by the wheels of passing cars. Women in bright silk saris troop along the roads with jasmine flowers in their hair. The cattle are strong and white, and their long horns are painted blue.

The greatest of the Chola kings who once dominated this landscape was Rajaraja I, who ruled from c 985-1012. He conquered Sri Lanka and the Deccan for his dynasty, made Tanjore the capital of southern India, and at the end of his reign erected the Big Temple, or Brihadeshvara, then the most magnificent temple in the peninsula, to commemorate his glory. On its completion in 1010, the Cholas donated to the new structure no less than 500 tonnes of gold, jewels and silver looted from Sri Lanka, as well as 60 bronze images of deities; two thirds were given by Rajaraja, while the rest were given by his sisters, queens, officials and nobles.

Entering the Big Temple today, and passing over the warm flagstones through two magnificent courtyards, each entered through a monumental gateway, you see on every side oiled black-stone images of gods and demons, saints and hermits, and, in particular, of Lord Shiva and his consorts. In front of some, pilgrims prostrate themselves; in front of others, small offerings of flowers are placed, or small camphor lamps are lit.

All are as sensuously carved as the bronzes; indeed, the same families who made the bronzes often worked as sculptors, too, and the two were often made in the same family workshops. As with the Chola bronzes — recently exhibited at the Royal Academy in London — there is a startling clarity and purity about the way the near-naked bodies of the gods and the saints are displayed, yet by the simplest devices their joys and pleasures, and above all their enjoyment of each other’s beauty, and their overwhelming sexuality is highlighted.

Even in the holiest innermost sanctuary of the temple, guarded by colossal dancing demons, where the Brahmins perform the evening arti, or fire ceremony, incanting their ancient Sanskrit slokas in front of the 6m (20ft) Shiva lingam, queens, courtesans and goddesses alike are shown carefree and sensual: bare-breasted, they tease their menfolk, standing on tiptoe to kiss them, hands resting provocatively on their hips. Kings and gods both wear their hair in beehive topknots and sit crosslegged gazing down from their thrones under crimson parasols, as the courtiers feast and dancing girls celebrate their monarch’s victories.

The rituals that you see enacted in the temples such as Tanjore were being performed when the temples of Ancient Greece and Egypt were still in use; yet while the gods of Thebes and the Parthenon have both been dead and forgotten for millennia, the gods and temples of Hindu India are as alive as ever.

For Hindu civilisation is the only great classical culture to survive from the ancient world intact, and at temples such as that at Tanjore one can still catch glimpses of festivals and practices that were seen by Greek or Egyptian ambassadors to India long before the rise of Ancient Rome. Indeed, it is only when you grasp the astonishing antiquity, and continuity, of Hinduism that the you realise quite how miraculous its survival has been.

Twenty miles from Tanjore in the small village of Swamimalai I saw another no less miraculous survival. For here, the descendants of the original Chola bronze casters have settled, and today the same families that cast the bronzes for the great Chola monarchs still work at casting bronzes for the new temples that are springing up wherever the Indian diaspora have settled, from Neasden to New Jersey, from Solihull to Singapore.

I met the most senior of the different families of bronze casters, K. Mohanraj Sthapathy, in his workshop on the main street of the village. He explained the lost wax process by which the same sculptures are still made, 35 generations since one of his ancestors first cast bronzes for Rajaraja Chola. He explained how, just as his ancestors used to do, he first makes a model in a mixture of beeswax and resin; how the model is encased in a fine-grained clay, then left to dry in the sun for a week. The mud pack is then heated in such a way that the wax runs out, leaving a mould into which the bronze is then poured — a process the sculptors compare to conception, with the mould taking the place of the womb for the future god. When the mould is broken, the sculpture of the god is waiting, ready for finishing, which can take as long six weeks.

This simple process is also part of an ancient ritual: only on a new moon or a full moon can a model be begun or cast; its eyes must be carved between 4am and 6am when there is no sound or disturbance to upset the deity; no meat or alcohol can be consumed while a bronze is being made; and only the most elite families of Brahmins can perform this work. There were other workshops that did not follow these traditions, he said, and sold work to tourists; but no temple of repute would, he claimed, touch bronzes made any other way.

“With the blessings of God we have taken this birth,” he said. “God creates man, but we are so blessed that we simple men are able to create gods.”

Mohanraj paused, looking for the right words: “These idols are reflections of our minds and spirits, so while we are working we must behave as if we were in a holy temple: we must speak only the truth, be kind and polite and loving to everyone, be obedient to our guru and our parents.”

Mohanraj pointed to a newly finished bronze on a shelf beside him: “The god only fully enters a new idol when we open his eyes — the final piece of carving — when the bronze is delivered to a temple. It is difficult work. But when I stand at the back of a temple and see the worshippers praying to a god I brought into being,” said Mohanraj, “then my happiness is complete.”

The Last Mughal, by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury, £25), is published in paperback next month: £8.54 from 0870 1608080, www.booksfirst.co.uk .

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there:
William Dalrymple travelled to Tanjore with India Tourism (020-7437 3677, www.incredibleindia.org) and the Ultimate Travel Company (020-7386 4646, www.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk), which offers journeys by road, rail and river.

Where to stay:
Sterling Swamimalai hotel, Kumbakonam, one hour’s drive from Tanjore (00 91 44 2498 4114, www.sterlingswamimalai.net).

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