BUILDING MATERIALS. In the Peninsula of India, all the most ancient buildings are of stone, while the edifices of the past five hundred years, comprising some of the most stupendous piles, are of brick. The great religious institutions of Sri Sailam in Cuddapah, at Conjeveram, Chellambram, Srirangam, the temples at Tanjore, Gangondaram, and Tribhuwanam, the ruins at Bijanagar, Bijapur, Gogi, and Kulburga, the pagoda at Leepichi in the Bellary, and that at Tarpatri in the Cuddapah district, monuments of ancient Hindu and Mahomedan art, are of stone. Those connected with architecture, sculpture, and painting, called into being by the exigencies of religion, always the best stimulus to works of design, have suffered more from sectarian zeal than the ravages of time, and they are widely scattered over the length and breadth of the land. Sculptured stones, fortifications, temples, and works of irrigation are found in every direction, and not only impart a knowledge of the state of science and civilisation at various periods, bu t throw a valuable light on other subjects of inquiry. The recent advent of the British nation into India, the efforts needed to obtain a standing place, and the duty devolving on them of intro ducing useful public works, have all hitherto prevented them from engaging in ornamental architecture. The cupola of the Presbyterian church at Madras, built by Colonel de Havi land, is good, and there are a few ornamental buildings in Calcutta and Bombay. But works such as the Ganges Canal, the Southern Coast Canals, already extending almost from the Brah maputra and the Ganges to the western coast, the great dams across the Godavery and the Kistna, the tunnelling of the Ganges and Indus, the roads everywhere, from Cape Comorin to Tibet, the railroads with their stupendous bridges, and the irrigation canals, already in vastness and in public usefulness, surpass all that Aryan, Hindu, Buddhist, Pathan, Moghul, or Arab rulers had done during their previous 3000 years of occu pation. The Moghul dynasties of India, besides palaces and tombs, porticos and mosques, left a few useful sarai and bridges, but many of these were erected by private persons.
In the northern part of the Peninsula, from the Central Provinces to the Godavery, is a great greenstone area, the trap flowing over and cover ing sedimentary rocks ; and in the east, in the province of Hyderabad, is a vast Plutonic out burst of granite. On the south of this granitic
and volcanic rock there had been an estuary, extending from north of Madras to the Kistna, and from the Bay of Bengal up the Kistna and Pennar to the sources of the Gutpurba and Mal purba, and it is now filled with distorted, broken, upraised limestone, blue slate, and sandstones, from near Curcumbarry, through Tarpatri, Cuddapah, Kurnool, to Kaladgi and Belgaum. To the south of that narrow gulf is the great granitic tract of Bellary and Mysore, succeeded further south, about Trichinopoly and Madura, with other limestone beds, both fossiliferous and non-fossili ferous; and from these volcanic, metamorphic, and aqueous-formed rocks, building stones are drawn.
Laterite rock is a clay iron ore peculiar to India; it is widely diffused, and has been largely used in India. The Arcade Inquisition at Goa is built of it ; also St. Mary's Church, Madras, and tho old fortress at Malacca.
Trap - Tuffa, sometimes white, sometimes greenish or purple, resembles laterite in the quality of being easily cut when raised, after wards hardening on exposure to the air. It is used as a building stone, and suits well for basins, troughs, and aqueducts; it is not very extensively employed.
Littoral Concrete is invariably found close by the sea-shore, and is so named from its resemblance to the artificial stone formed by the cementation of sand, gravel, or other coarse material, by lime or mortar. It is composed of the material prevail ing on the shores,—of shells, sand, gravel, and pebbles,—and varies in its character with the rocks in the neighbourhood, being micaceous towards Cochin and Tellicherry, from the quantity of sand and other nodules from the granite and gneiss ; gravelly to the north of Bombay ; and around it, composed almost entirely of fragments of shells. Along the shores of Sind, Arabia, and the Red Sea, though the material composing it is abundant in a position similar to that m which it exists on the Malabar coast, but it is nowhere cemented into stone. Even in Bombay the cementation is far from invariable. The principal quarries are at Versova, about twenty miles to the north of Bombay, where the shore is sheltered by a vast dyke of basalt, formerly submerged.