A Preliminary Report on the Identification of Mason’s Marks at the Lesser Known Architectural Monuments (13th– 14thCentury CE) of Panchmahal District, Gujarat, India

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Department of History and Archaeology, North Eastern Hill University, Meghalaya, India.

2 CSIR Bhatnagar Fellow, CSIR Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India.

Abstract

The present paper deals with the preliminary identification of mason’s marks found in some of the historical
structures of the Panchmahal district, Gujarat. Unlike other historical and archaeological research fields, mason’s
marks represent a less known field in Indian academia. In very general terms, one can define a mason’s mark as
any signs ranging from short inscriptions to any form of alpha-numeric values inscribed on architectural elements.
In this paper, the authors discuss a series of such marks recorded at isolated historical buildings of the district,
trying to explain why inquiry into mason’s marks can be deemed an integral part of architectural studies. A brief
description of the study area and adapted methodologies is followed by the detailed accounts of the monuments
and the related finds in tabular format.

Keywords


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