Mediaeval Temples of the Dakhan c6.14

c6.14

As already noticed, the material used in these buildings is, almost exclusively, the Dakhan trap, and the masonry has been put together without mortar or any cementing material whatever. The blocks have been dressed to fit one another upon level beds, their weight, and that of the superincumbent masses keeping them in position. Much, therefore, depended upon a firm foundation, and this was, without doubt, a weak point. Very little was done in the way of excavating for firm foundations, the hard black earth or the solid rock, so often found at the surface, being deemed sufficient. Upon this was laid a bed of great rough boulders from which the walls directly sprang, the lowest course of dressed masonry being roughly hammer-dressed to fit upon the uneven boulders (See Plate LXXV). Consequently, any settlement or yielding of the foundation, as has frequently been the case, has caused the collapse of the walls above. For reasons of economy or lightness, brick has been occasionally used for the towers and superstructure above the cornice, as in the temple at Kokamthān. There is reason to believe brick was in much greater use in early times, as we find it in the old Buddhist *chaitya* at Ter¹ and the other old temples at the same place, where they are provided with wooden door frames and beams which, in brick buildings, were afterwards in stone. The stone walls, which were of variable thickness, and far heavier than would be built at present, were run up in two shells—an outer and inner—the space between being filled in with loose boulders or dry rubble. There is a conspicuous absence of through or bond stones or clamps, and there are many instances where the outer shell has fallen away, leaving the inner intact and supporting the roof, so that a person standing inside the building would not notice anything wrong with it.