Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c39.15

c39.15

Support to this view is provided by the technical details of the construction, of which the method of bonding is an instance. This has been effected in two ways, by the use of cement, and by the introduction of dowels, neither of which methods has been found except on rare occasions, in the masonry of India proper. Yet mortar, perfected by the Roman was now in universal use in all the countries of the west. Similarly the other system, that of jointing by dowels had been in vogue with the Ptolemaic Egyptians (323 to 30 B.C.), the Achaemenid Persians (B C. 550-350), and by the Greeks (B C. 500-300), but had been largely superseded at this time by lime mortar, the advantages of which were obvious. It is more than probable, therefore, that failing to find an acceptable process of bonding within their own experience, the architects and builders had gone much further afield, to the more advanced countries of the west, for a solution of this particular problem of structural technique.