King Rajaraja Chola II ruled the Chola Empire from 1146 to 1172 CE. He spent most of his reign in the secondary capital of Ayirattali (Pazhaiyarai), an urban complex that included Darasuram. Unlike his predecessors who focused on expanding existing temples, Rajaraja II sponsored the construction of new temples. The Airavatesvara Temple was his principal architectural legacy.
The temple was much larger in its original form than what survives today. It originally formed part of a vast complex with seven concentric enclosures, of which only the innermost remains. The temple's inscriptions are in Tamil and record donations made to the deity. The Devanayaki Amman shrine in the adjacent enclosure was built later by Rajaraja II's successor, Kulothunga III, and was extensively modified during the Nayaka period.
This separate shrine for the goddess marks an important development in Chola temple architecture — it was among the earliest instances where the goddess was given a shrine of her own rather than being placed as an attendant deity within the main complex. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, several sculptures from Airavatesvara, including the famous Bhikshatana panel depicting Shiva as a wandering mendicant, were relocated to the Thanjavur Museum and the Madras Museum for preservation.
