This beautiful Maratha palace in Thanjavur, called Aranmanai by the locals, was originally named Shivgangai Fort by its builders, the Thanjavur Nayakas, who ruled from here after the fall of Cholas and Pandyas. The area was later ruled by Marathas till the British took over, but the palace itself always stayed with the royal family. Today it is a museum, visited by tourists and history enthusiasts. Attractions include the colorful Durbar Hall, Saraswati Mahal Library, the bell tower and the Raja Chola Art Gallery. The complex is a mish-mash of buildings in different styles, with pathways connecting them.
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Since prehistoric times, India abides by the vast cultural heritage with the glorious tradition of preserving knowledge through oral and written communication. Historic structures include the temples, palaces, tombs & mosques, and the buildings, artefacts, historic precincts, and cultural landscapes1,2,3,4,5. Moreover, the ancient materials and the protected archives like literary collections, metal carvings, palm leaf manuscripts, wall paintings and stone inscriptions were the earliest historic references symbolizing the regional styles, agama shastras (religious rituals) and Chitra sutra (mural paintings) before the invention of the paper6,7,8,9. The earliest known palm-leaf manuscript belongs to the 2nd Century A.D of the Gupta regime. Writing on palm leaf continued up to 19th Century A.D, archiving the historical significance of civilization. Heritage is any tangible or intangible values passed on to us from the past. This wisdom hauls various traditional significances like economic, cultural, aesthetic, spiritual and archaeological sources that connect with past civilization and carry their advancements to modern times. Likewise, some ancient sources communicate the knowledge, ranging from the caves to copper plates and from the bark of trees to leaves of various kinds8,10,11,12.The ancient manuscripts are the sources of human history available on various media like stone, clay, tablets, palm leaves, metal leaves, barks, animal skin, cloth, paper etc. Despite all the ancient writing materials, palm leaf was used as the predominant media due to the local availability of palm trees across the Indian subcontinent10. Though many modern innovations have emerged in recent times, not all are holistic. Few recent studies underway understand the ancient structures' holistic construction practices through digital preservation, artificial intelligence, and modern analytical techniques. Starting from the Indus valley providing the evidence on the ancient town planning of Harrapan and Mohenjo-Daro depict the building culture, advanced drainage system and road systems. The construction method has transformed since 300 B.C with the whole new level of Dravidian style of gigantic towers. Long pillared halls, artistic vimanas and common structural features such as domes, slender minarets and arches were influenced from the Islamic and the Persian style of architectures. Every structure has its unique significances and architectural point of view. One such fine example of Brihadeshwara temple, Tanjore, India has the longest vimana of height 216 ft with axial and symmetrical geometry rules with fortified granite structure in the world5. The archaeological archive forum across the countries has documented some of the traditional secrets of old construction practices and preservative methods to understand the designs' scientific methods. It is estimated that there are 300 manuscript libraries all over India and 77 libraries outside India on preserving the archives. Some of the major repositories in India are national archives of India (N.A.I.), Indian national trust for art and cultural heritage (I.N.T.A.C.H.), Indira Gandhi national center for the arts (I.G.N.C.A.), Department of culture and its museum and libraries, state archives and state museums. Mostly the national archives reveal the secrets of regimes, culture, medicinal scripts, trades and civilization13. The ancient construction practices prominently utilized the binders such as clay, mud, limestone, volcanic ash and gypsum in the preparation of mortar since the ancient times, following its setting and hardening properties. Archaeological evidences has shown the usage of Lime started before the prehistoric period in Iran and China14. Romans and Egyptians were known for their use of pozzolanic elements, gypsum and quick Lime in early construction, unfortunately the plasters prolonged to set at conventional period of time. Hence the historic engineers and masons experimented with the locally available organic substances like gum Arabic, animal glue, blood of animals, figs, egg whites and yolks, casein, keratin that served as adhesives substances to enhance the weak mortars15. Francesco milizia16 reported on mixture added with oil to enhance the mortars' impermeability used in aqueducts and cisterns. The carbohydrate-based materials such as sugar, molasses, malt, drum stick gum and arabica gum were incorporated during production to quickly react to form calcium saccharate, which improved the cohesion properties and resistance against environmental forces17,18,19,20,21. The cactus (nopal juice) extracts were commonly added to mortars in ancient Mexican buildings to resist the water penetration and crack formation on the surfaces by improved mechanical properties due to the cactus' polysaccharide mucilage interaction with portlandite at early stages22. Calcium oxalates (Weddellite, whewellite) are important biominerals found in nature and are the most abundant organic minerals category identified in sediments and hydrothermal veins. The genesis of calcium oxalates has been identified in many limestone structures as layers, and they act as a barrier to reduce the deterioration of stones due to weathering action. The effective role of jaggery (unrefined sugars), kadukkai (Terminalia chebula), kulamavu (Persea Macrantha) in lime mortars have been analyzed, and it has been found that the addition of fermented organics leads to the formation of weddellite in lime mortar, it has dramatically increased physical and mechanical properties23. Protein-lime was mainly used in ancient masonry construction, clay sculptures, mural paintings, and wall paintings; it's been found that the addition of albumen can bring a series of physicochemical property changes stickiness, water repellency, air-entraining and antimicrobial etc.24,25.The sixth century C.E. sites of Ellora caves, India, reported on earthen/Lime as a binding material in addition to cannabis Sativa (Hemp). Daulatabad fort, India reported on the addition of local vegetal fibres into mortar providing the information about the hempcrete production technology during Yadava regime26. The use of organic compounds dated back to ancient times and has widely spread across the world to enhance the mortar's strength. The mortar produced with lime putty and cheese adhered extremely well to stone blocks. The most commonly used additives were oxblood, animal fat, dairy products, tree barks, linseed oil, fig juices, lard, eggs, wine, beer, casein and cactus juice etc.27. Based on the regional availability a group of herbs rich in carbohydrate, protein and fat were fermented for few days and used for lime mortars production instead of water. During fermentation, the carbon-di-oxide produced will react with Lime for faster hardening and biomineralize calcium carbonate polymorphs28. Much ancient text talks about the use of plant and animal extracts in construction. One such preserved palm-leaf manuscript from the Padmanabhapuram Palace museum (Fig. 1), Tamil nadu, India, described the locally available organic herbs into mortar during the construction practices. 2ff7e9595c