Hi Friends, I once went to Kalughumalai , near kovilpatti, There is a small temple , behind the main temple, When i saw the temple , i was really amazed, They have actually tried to convert a small mountain into temple, By seeing impression on the sides and floor of the half built temple, I thought the rock was sweeped and carved like sweeping and digging the sand,
I dont even have any slightest idea of what technique was used, If anybody knows about this please share your information.
also friends I wonder why there are are closely parallel lines etched on the floor and the walls of semi finished temples( especially mamallapuram) what were these lines for?
the close lines are infact a string of square holes chisled out. later wooden pegs were inserted into them ( aappu) and watered. the peg would take in water and expand ...when the whole string of pegs expanded they had enough force to crack the stone. have added the pictures in the photo section
oh, okok...those must be the chisel marks..remember seeing them in action when the aru padai veedu construction was going on in besant nagar...the guys just kept chiselling away all day..uliyin oosai might sound good for a name but it was pretty irritating stuff when you have to put up with it all day..unlike the lilting rings of a damsels anklets..
Are you referring to the big squares on the walls etced and unfinished? I think we talked about this a lot during our mahabs trip but all were only assumptions :)
Now another thing strikes me. Just a wild guess. I know its easier to draw within sqares. ie. to draw a replica of an existing picture, the original picture is divided into sqares by parallel lines. An in the plain sheet again parallel lines are drawn as sqares. If we start copying the lines as in the orignal, we will get the replica of the orginal. Again, the size of the picture can be varied without affecting the proportion of the orignal. If I have one inch sqares in the original and half inch sqares in my fresh paper, i will get the same painting half the size of the original without loosing out the proportions.
Maybe, the sculptors also had a mastercopy drawn in a cloth or someother material and tried to enlarge it on the walls and left it after that.
I also thought why not chalkpiece or charcoal instead of such labour. Anyway, for 'pudaippu chirpam' they have to remove the surrounding pieces and these sqares will help them to save lot of effort.
Hi Friends! First of all let me introduce myself, I am a civil structural engineer working in Abu Dhabi, I was informed about thisgroup by Mr. Ramesh (RAR), japan. I found here there are many interesting topics being discussed, so I also would like to participate in some.
Have you ever been to singaperumal kovil near chennai? this temples also like what Mr Raja ram said, this temple also like carved out from a mount. when you go around this temple you can see that, the main karpagiraham and all in low level but when you go around you have to step up the mount and then down. Really during those days when they cut out a stone for sculptures and temple they would have toiled very hard with huge task force. But I am also wondering what techniques they could have used!!
With the limited knowledge I have, Singaperumal koil is a 'kudavarai' meaning templed carved out of a mountain, instead of stones being brought to a different place for making the sculpture.
Initial days stone temples were 'kudavarais'. I am not sure about the timeline of Singaperumal koil. experts can pour in details.
For your information, pillayarpatti is also a similar temple like Singaperumal koil.
Please follw this link about pillayaarpatti http://indiantemples.com/Tamilnadu/karppill.html what you said is correct! this temple detes back to 4 th century AD and related to Pandiya kingdom...acc'to this page.. But when i visited this temple I was not able to perceive that this is a rock cut temple...may be because of the later developments in the other outer prakaaram....
The Siva and Vishnu moolavars and shrines in Thirumayam (Pudukkotai - Karaikudi route) are also rock cut; these temples are maintained by ASI and are worth visiting. The octogonal tank called 'satya pushkarani' is also an unusual one.
In this site(http://www.kalugumalai.com/) please go to photos section, vast collection of photos are availabe, about the Jain structures and the vattuvan koil (The temple which i referred in my first mail)
In this site(http://www.kalugumalai.com/) please go to photos section, vast collection of photos are availabe, about the Jain structures and the vattuvan koil (The temple which i referred in my first mail)