BHUBANESWAR : The plain stones on Sun temple at Konark will not look bland anymore.
The Archaeological Survey of India (Puri circle) is decorating the plain stones on the ancient structure with minimal carvings and mouldings within the permitted limits of the revised National Policy for Conservation of Ancient Monuments, Archaeological Sites and Remains-2014.
A majority of the plain stonework on the ancient temple’s Jagamohana was done in the mid-1980s to protect it from crumbling. In the 90s, ASI began strengthening the platform on which Jagamohana stands and fixed plain stones in the platform area where stone sculptures were missing or damaged.
The ASI is now decorating the plain stones on the Jagamohana to unify them with the existing exquisite designs and sculptures of the monument. “However, the design intervention is minimal in nature as the norms do not allow replication of any original design or sculpture,” said Puri circle head Dibishidha Garnayak. As per the revised conservation policy, while ASI cannot redo the broken sculptures, it can add carvings and mouldings to plain stones.
The designs are mostly carvings of flowers and geometrical patterns besides mouldings which are being added to plain stones. This was not possible prior to 2014 as the old conservation policy that was framed in the 1920s mandated replacing the damaged portions of the monument with only plain slabs.
The design intervention project was initially piloted in 2022 and now the work is being extended to other parts of the monument. Then, a stretch of the wall on the southern side of the Jagamohana was replaced with khondalite stone carvings and mouldings to beautify the stone slabs on the monument.
A few years back, following uproar on social media over replacement of sculpted panels with plain ones, ASI had clarified that it used plain stone only wherein there was no evidence left and as per ASI’s the then archaeological policy only such portions were filled with plain stones.
Meanwhile, work on removal of sand from the sealed Jagamohan of the Sun temple will also be initiated soon. Construction of a mechanical platform, which is required to start the process, has been completed by the ASI. The platform will be used for installation of lifts that will be used by the workers to reach the temple top for the work. Sand was filled in the Jagamohana from 1903 to 1909 and since then, it has remained sealed.