HERITAGE STONE IN INDIA

India has a bewildering variety of natural stones that have been extensively used as dimensional, ornamental and sculptural stone in various temples and monuments for centuries. These heritage sites have a major role in showcasing India’s natural stones resources that occur in diverse geological formations of different geologic periods across the Indian subcontinent. The geological formations also exhibit tone and textures of varied geological processes thus, providing a storehouse of resources for a plethora of monuments.

This paper deals with the application of natural stones used in heritage monuments, their geotechnical characters and climatic deterioration. The classical example is the lion capital, adopted as the official emblem of India, carved out of a single block of polished sandstone. It is considered a masterpiece. Buddhist Monuments at Sanchi have many monolithic pillars and the Khajuraho Group of Monuments, provides a fusion of sculpture and architecture, profusely captivating erotica engraved in sandstone. Subsequently, the construction approach of utilizing in situ rock or the rock mass evolved into rock-cut architecture which has superb records with a plethora of rock cut structures in Ajanta and Ellora caves and monolithic Kailash temple. The Deccan Volcanic Province remained the primary stone source for these spectacular monuments. Konarak , with its exquisite temple architecture used khondalite and laterite as natural stones. The charnockite used in the monolithic rock cut Mahamallipuram temple, granites in Meenakshi temple and Hampi made use of the naturally occurring rocks of the peninsular shield. The Vindhyan Supergroup of rocks remained a huge resource of natural stone having widespread usage in monuments of Medieval period with use of red sandstone, the prominent being the Humayun's Tomb and Red fort while the gleaming white marble from Delhi Supergroup of rocks used in the Taj Mahal.

The number of heritage sites in India is extremely large having ubiquitous utilization of natural stones from proximal geological environment whilst their inherent texture, color and geotechnical characters were the primary concept for usage as dimensional stone for the buildings/monuments since ancient times.