Taj Mahal design has Harappan, not foreign touch

Bangalore: Designers of the 17th century Taj Mahal employed the same unit of measurement used by the Harappan civilisation as far back as 2000 BC, according to a study by an IIT-Kanpur professor.

These units were used by builders in India until the British imposed their own units in the 18th century.

The study by R. Balasubramaniam of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, and reported in the latest issue of Current Science, has for the first time shown the unit of length called 'angulam' - mentioned in Kautilya's treatise on statecraft Arthasastra dated 300BC, was used without a break in India for over 3,900 years.

The ancient 'angulam' has been found to be equal to 1.763 modern centimetres, according to Balasubramaniam, a professor of materials and metallurgical engineering.

He has carried out dimensional analysis of some of India's historical structures to identify the measuring units used in their engineering plans.

He says he was surprised that the 'angulam' and its multiples 'vitasti' (12 angulams) and 'dhanus' (108 angulams) have been used as the unit of measurement right from the Harappan times until the pre-modern era when the Taj was built.

Balasubramaniam, who last year studied the dimensions of the 1,600-year-old Delhi Iron Pillar at the Qutub Minar complex, found the 'angulam' and its multiple 'dhanus' were used as the basic units of length in its design.

Now in a paper published in Current Science, he has shown the modular plan of the Taj Mahal complex is based on the use of grids of sides measuring 60 and 90 vitasti.

He says the study has established the design and architecture of the Taj is based on traditional Indian units codified in "Arthasastra" and "there is nothing foreign" in its design.

He believes the workers from the Harappan days were perhaps using some kind of scale "that was handed over through generations".