Q1.
Make a list of all the materials we have encountered so far in the carving or construction of structures; make a list of pros and cons for each of them. Did you notice that none of the structures discussed so far use any cement mortar?
Answer
Here is the list, in the order the chapter meets them.
| Material | Where in the chapter | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baked brick | Most Harappan cities; the Agra Fort originally; Bishnupur temples | Made from clay that is abundant in alluvial plains; small, light, standard-sized, so unskilled hands can lay it fast; a whole city can be built from local earth | Needs fuel to fire; each unit is small, so a large span or a tall tower is hard; brick erodes in driving rain unless faced |
| Stone — sandstone | Dholavira; Jama Masjid Ahmedabad (yellow); Mehrangarh and Agra Fort (red, from Dholpur, some 60 km away); Lingarāja Temple | Cuts and carves easily, comes in large blocks, weathers well, gives a building colour without paint | Very heavy to quarry and to move — the Agra Fort’s stone had to be hauled 60 km; softer varieties wear and stain over time |
| Stone — granite | Bṛihadīśhvara Temple, Thanjavur | Extremely strong and durable; carvings survive a thousand years; allows enormous height | So hard that carving is desperately slow; huge blocks demand large organised labour and clever lifting |
| Stone — marble | Dilwara (from the nearby Aravalli hills); Shah Jahan’s palaces at Agra; the Taj Mahal | Fine and even-grained, so it takes deep, lace-like undercutting and a polish; accepts inlay of coloured stone; luminous — the Taj appears to change colour through the day | Expensive and often distant; softer than granite and easily scratched; vulnerable to acidic air pollution, which yellowed the Taj |
| Living rock (basalt) | Ellora, Ajanta, Udayagiri–Khandagiri | No transport, no mortar, no joints — the building is monolithic and therefore extremely durable | Purely subtractive: nothing can be corrected; thousands of tonnes must be removed; a hidden flaw can ruin the work |
| Terracotta | Bishnupur panels; well rings; the water pipes of the Agra Fort | Modelled soft, then fired hard; panels can be made in bulk at a bench, and a spoilt one costs only itself; good for pipes and rings | Brittle; shrinks as it dries and fires, so sizes must be allowed for; each panel is small, so a facade needs hundreds |
| Timber (including Burmese teak) | Chettinadu houses; Kerala church roofs; the earlier wooden Mysuru Palace | Light, strong in bending, easy to carve and to join; ideal for roofs, pillars, doors and ceilings | Burns — the old Mysuru Palace was destroyed by fire; rots in damp; attacked by termites |
| Roofing tile | The Kalloopara church and Kerala houses | Sheds heavy monsoon rain quickly off a steep slope; light; replaceable one tile at a time | Needs a timber frame beneath it; tiles slip or crack and need regular attention |
| Semi-precious stone inlay; stained glass | Taj Mahal walls; Mysuru Palace windows | Brings permanent colour to a building without paint that fades | Costly, slow, highly skilled, and easily stolen or broken |
And yes — no cement mortar anywhere. That is a real observation, not a trick question.
Why they managed without it. Modern (Portland) cement is a 19th-century invention, so nothing built before the colonial period could have used it. Those builders got stability from four other things:
- Weight. A wall thick and heavy enough does not need glue; friction and gravity hold it. This is why old walls are so massive.
- Precise cutting. Blocks dressed to fit tightly transfer load evenly across the whole joint. At Dholavira you can still see the smooth surfaces of the stone blocks.
- Interlocking shapes. The Harappan well is the perfect example: its bricks are trapezoid, so each ring wedges together and the well cannot collapse inward under the pressure of infiltrating groundwater. Shape is doing the work a binder would do.
- Corbelling. Where a gap had to be bridged, blocks were stacked in a staircase pattern, each projecting a little beyond the one below until the two sides met — a way of spanning without either a true arch or a beam.