hi sivaram; nice photos. The fort photographs were good and the one named "beautiful handwriting of the sculptor". Im not sure if the scultor used the chisel to carve the letters. I think he must have used a template made of steel which had the letters carved out in that and used that to carve the letters in the rock. Because the letters with curves are too smooth to have been chiselled by hand. This would have been a good method to keep the writing from becoming illegible over a period of time.
nice photos. The fort photographs were good and the one named "beautiful handwriting of the sculptor". Im not sure if the scultor used the chisel to carve the letters. I think he must have used a template made of steel which had the letters carved out in that and used that to carve the letters in the rock. Because the letters with curves are too smooth to have been chiselled by hand. This would have been a good method to keep the writing from becoming illegible over a period of time.
sivaram; it was just a thought not that i have any concrete evidence here. Maybe because my handwriting is horrible i felt that there was no way anybody could write (let alone sculpt!) that beautifully :):) Another reason was that in that the curves on the letters were so geometric and not like any other "kalvettu" which have haphazard writing. The curves are too beautiful to have been done freehand. Also if we want something to remain for 1000s of years why do it in a haphazard way. It looks like this person had an eye for detail and thats why i said he is bound to have used some kind of metal template (like our modern day stencils) for all letters and then carved them onto the rock face. If there was some kind of a standard for "kalvettus" like size, depth of letters and proper templates then probably most kalvettus of today would be legible.
it was just a thought not that i have any concrete evidence here. Maybe because my handwriting is horrible i felt that there was no way anybody could write (let alone sculpt!) that beautifully :):)
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Rahul,
ha ha, you are not alone on that.
Another reason was that in that the curves on the letters were so geometric and not like any other "kalvettu" which have haphazard writing. The curves are too beautiful to have been done freehand. Also if we want something to remain for 1000s of years why do it in a haphazard way. It looks like this person had an eye for detail and thats why i said he is bound to have used some kind of metal template (like our modern day stencils) for all letters and then carved them onto the rock face. If there was some kind of a standard for "kalvettus" like size, depth of letters and proper templates then probably most kalvettus of today would be legible. =================================================================
Me too wondered that. Of some of kalvettu's i have seen, this is the most beautiful one(I mean the font here).I thought someone in our group could give more details on that.