With Sculpted Stones: Mysteries of Mamallapuram, parents and educators have the wonderful opportunity to guide children on a journey of art appreciation while visiting the site—helping them develop observation skills and critical thinking. Together with Nithya V’s brilliant photographs, author Ashwin Prabhu encourages children to observe with curiosity and pay attention to detail.
At the outset, all the styles of stone architecture and sculptures from Mamallapuram–cave temples, monoliths, structural temples and elaborate open-air sculptures on rock faces (relief sculptures)— are described. For example, the author explains how for the structural temples, the stone blocks were prepared or carved separately in a workshop and then stacked and assembled at the chosen site, much like modular blocks of LEGO (would be wonderful if LEGO adds a Mamallapuram set to its iconic building sets, of which the Taj Mahal is one!). He asks open-ended questions: What was Mamallapuram? A trading port? A capital city of Pallava dynasty? An open-air art gallery?
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