A Review on Historical Earth Pigments Used in India’s Wall Paintings
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Give instrumentation for the analyses in this paper. (see corrections!)
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
The questions you asked have been answered. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I read this review by Sharma and Singh with interest, as the title and the topic sounded appealing and fascinating.
Unfortunately, the paper didn't match my expectations. The abstract itself is not clear enough about what is reported in the article. Which is the contribution of the authors to the field? It was not easy to understand to me. Most of the discussion is about the nature of a gamma of pigments (which are quite well known to conservation scientists), and the authors mostly limit their work to cite papers (by themselves or others) that report on the finding of such pigments in several archaeological sites in India. Only one (confused) table is shown about scientific analyses on these pigments, without any comments or discussion. I assume that also those experimental data are taken from other works, but this is not clearly stated. (There is also a Materials and Methods section in the paper, which seems a little bit out of context...)
Finally, the style and form of the manuscript is poor. The English language needs some careful revision. Furthemore, the text formatting evidences some repeated mistakes and flaws, which clearly are not just typos, but reflect a lack of attention by the authors. To cite a few:
- ALL chemical formulas are written without the subscript numbers (even H2O instead of H2O).
- A lot of words are attached together, without the correct spacing (6-18thcentury).
- BC and CE are used together (you have to choose coherently - if you use BC, then use AD for years after the 0; if you use CE, then use BCE for years before the 0).
- The space is very often missing after a full stop.
Overall, I think that this paper is not suitable for the publication on Heritage.
Author Response
The present manuscript has been revised according to review suggestions. The English revision of this paper is now done by native speaker. The abstract clearly show the uses of earth pigment in India’s wall painting. In addition, it was very tough for us to collect information and data for earth pigment study because of unavailability of sources. Table-1 briefly shows the chronological development of pigment. The methods and materials section is now explained. The chemical formula is now given correctly. The format and spacing errors have been corrected.
Reviewer 3 Report
Generally this is an important review of technical studies of pigments in Indian wall paintings. Another component of the work is a presentation of analytical methods (XRD/FTIR/Raman) for the identification of pigments (it is not clear to the reviewer how novel this is - instead it would be more useful to compare data in Table 1 with specific analytical methods used for identification). A final section of the work reviews ochre based pigments and provides well-known chemical and geographical descriptions. As a consequence, the real novelty in this work is the compilation of data from technical studies in the first part of the manuscript. At the moment there is insufficient discussion of the meaning of secco/fresco/tempera and how binding media were or were not identified (or attributed based on pigment componsition), and a critical assessment of materials and when they appear and where they came from. Given the possibilty of repainting and restoration pigments it would be particularly important to understand when ultramarine(or lapis lazuli) is first used, and more commentary on the presence of orpiment (is it only found in Ajanta?) and cinnabar would be useful.
Generally in the text there are many cases of problems in formatting and editing - and words which have no spaces between them.
My suggestion is that the title of the manuscript and focus of the work should be changed to better reflect the content. Furthermore, careful editing of the text is required.
Author Response
Generally this is an important review of technical studies of pigments in Indian wall paintings.
Q1: Another component of the work is a presentation of analytical methods (XRD/FTIR/Raman) for the identification of pigments (it is not clear to the reviewer how novel this is - instead it would be more useful to compare data in Table 1 with specific analytical methods used for identification).
Reply: Table-1 is exclusively based on pigments which found in India’s wall painting. To merge table-4 in the table-1 is not right option because some of authors did not characterize the pigment through analytical techniques, their evidences based on micro-chemical spot analysis. However, if you suggest us further for removing table-4, so we can remove to clarify the confusion.
A final section of the work reviews ochre based pigments and provides well-known chemical and geographical descriptions. As a consequence, the real novelty in this work is the compilation of data from technical studies in the first part of the manuscript.
Q2: At the moment there is insufficient discussion of the meaning of secco/fresco/tempera and how binding media were or were not identified (or attributed based on pigment componsition), and a critical assessment of materials and when they appear and where they came from.
Reply: As per reviewer suggestion, we have added the one more section on “types of wall painting technique”. From this section, we more emphasized the content on components of wall painting and painting technique. We have limited the content for binder, as binder itself a different topic, and makes present manuscript more lengthy. But for clarify how binder mixes with pigment we have given little information on binders. The critical assessment of pigment was somewhere difficult process because of unavailability of sources and less information present in India. But we have been trying to relocate some of earth pigment came from is now given with their respective pigments.
Q3: Given the possibilty of repainting and restoration pigments it would be particularly important to understand when ultramarine(or lapis lazuli) is first used, and more commentary on the presence of orpiment (is it only found in Ajanta?) and cinnabar would be useful.
Reply: The present manuscript is totally based on earth pigments; however, table-1 listed some of other than earth pigment. We have not explained lapis lazuli, but we mentioned that the lapis lazuli as blue pigment used in Ajanta’s wall paintings. To discuss on repainting and restoration is beyond of this topic, although reviewing on earth pigment literature can somewhere help in conserving and restoring the wall paintings. Furthermore, orpiment was not used in Ajanta, it was used in Ellora, similarly cinnabar used in Ellora’s wall paintings.
Q4: Generally in the text there are many cases of problems in formatting and editing - and words which have no spaces between them.
Reply: Formatting and editing of the present manuscript have been corrected
Q6: My suggestion is that the title of the manuscript and focus of the work should be changed to better reflect the content. Furthermore, careful editing of the text is required.
Reply: As per your suggestions, most of the text given in the manuscript has been changed, and now its show more reflection of content without changing the title. The present manuscript has been revised by native speaker. And therefore English editing is now more coherent and precise.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The new title and version are an improvement. The pdf version uploaded has comments and corrections indicated - and there are many instances of typos and missed spaces in the text/subscripts in chemical formulae, etc.. I also think the work would benefit from stylistic editing.
Author Response
The present manuscript has been revised.
