Chapter IV · The Outer Gallery 04 / 12

Reading the Relief

Raked-light recording

Low-angle illumination reveals chisel paths invisible under diffuse light, mapping each figure's relief depth to within two millimetres of the original stone surface.

Stone-register coordinates

Every panel is assigned a grid position in the photographic atlas — east gallery bay A-1 through west gallery bay G-42 — cross-referenced to the earliest systematic survey.

Lichen and moss mapping

Biological colonization traces centuries of monsoon runoff across each stone face, revealing which surfaces have sheltered from rain since the 12th century.

Rubbings and overlays

Fragmentary scenes are aligned with complete 19th-century estampages from the founding archive, recovering narrative sequences broken by laterite collapse.