CHAPTER XIII.INDIA.

Thenumber of rude-stone monuments in India is probably as great or even greater than that of those to be found in Europe, and they are so similar that, even if they should not turn out to be identical, they form a most important branch of this enquiry. Even irrespective, however, of these, the study of the history of architecture in India is calculated to throw so much light on the problems connected with the study of megalithic monuments in the West that, for that cause alone it deserves much more attention than it has hitherto received.

No one, it is presumed, will now be prepared to dispute the early civilization at least of the northern parts of India. Whether the Aryans crossed the Indus three thousand yearsB.C., as I believe, or two thousandB.C., as others contend, is of little consequence to our present purposes. It is generally understood that the Vedas were compiled or reduced to writing thirteen centuries before Christ, and the Laws of Menu seven or eight hundred years before our era, and these works betoken a civilization of some standing. Ayodia was a great prosperous city at the time of the incidents described in the Ramayana, and Hastinapura when the tragedy of the Mahabharata was being enacted; and these great events took place probably one or two thousand years before Christ, or between these two dates. Or to come a little nearer to our time, all the circumstances depicted in all the thousand and one legends connected with the life and teaching of Sakya Muni (623 to 543B.C.), describe a country with cities and palaces, and possessing a very high state of civilization; and these legends are so numerous and so consentaneous that they may fairly be considered, for this purpose at least, as rising to the dignity of history. Yet with all this we now know it for a fact that no stone building or monument of stone now exists in India that was erected before the time of Asoka,B.C.250. But, besides negativeproof, we have in the early caves, 150 to 200B.C., such manifest proofs of the stone architecture being then a mere transcript of wooden forms that we know certainly that we have here reached the veryincunabulaof a style. Of course it does not follow from this that the cities before this time may not have been splendid or the palaces magnificent. In Burmah and Siam the palaces and monasteries are either wholly or mostly in wood, and these timber erections are certainly more gorgeous and quite as expensive as the stone buildings of the West, and the Indians seem to have been content with this less durable style of architecture till the influence of the Bactrian Greeks induced them to adopt the clumsier but more durable material of stone for their buildings.

With such an example before us, ought we to be surprised if the rude inhabitants of Europe were content with earth and the forms into which it could be shaped, till the example of the Romans taught them the use of the more durable and more strongly accentuated material? Nor will it do to contend that, if our forefathers got this hint from the Romans, they would have adopted the Roman style of architecture with it. The Indians certainly did not do so. Their early attempts at stone architecture are wooden, in the strictest sense, and retained their wooden forms for two or three centuries almost unchanged, and when gradually they became more and more appropriate to the newly adopted material, it was not Greek or foreign forms that they adopted, but forms of their own native invention. In Asoka's reign we have Greek or rather Assyrian ornaments in one of his lâts,[531]and something like a Persepolitan capital in some of the earlier caves,[532]but these died out, and it is not till after five centuries that we really find anything like the arts of Bactria at Amravati.[533]As the civilized race copied their own wooden forms with all the elaborateness of which wood carving is capable, so the rude race seems to have used the forms which were appropriate to their status, and which were the only forms they could appreciate.

Another peculiarity of Indian architecture is worth pointing out here as tending to modify one of the most generally received dogmas of Western criticism. In speaking of such monuments as New Grange or the tombs at Locmariaker, which are roofed by overlapping stones forming what is technically called a horizontal arch, it is usual to assume that this must have been done before the invention of the Roman or radiating arch form. So far as Indian experience goes, this assumption is by no means borne out. When Kutb u deen wished to signalise his triumph over the idolaters, he, in 1206A.D., employed the Hindus to erect a mosque for him in his recently acquired capital of Delhi. In the centre of the screen forming the mosque, he designed a great archway 22 feet span, 53 feet in height, and formed as a pointed arch of two sides of an equilateral spherical triangle. This was the usual form of Saracenic openings at Ghazni or Balkh in the beginning of the thirteenth century, but it was almost beyond the power of the Hindus to construct it. They did so, however, and it still stands, though crippled; but all the courses are horizontal, like their own domes, except two long stones which form the apex of the arch.[534]In a very few years after this time the Mahommedan conquerors had taught the subject Hindus to build radiating arches, and every mosque or Mahommedan building from that time forward is built with arches formed as we form them; but, except a very few in the reign of the cosmopolite Akbar, no single Hindu building or temple, even down to the present time, has an arch in the sense in which we understand the word.

One of the most striking instances of this peculiarity is found in the province of Guzerat. There are still to be seen the splendid ruins of the city of Ahmedabad built by the Mahommedan kings of the province between the years 1411 and 1583.[535]There every mosque and every building is arched or vaulted according to one system. In the same province stands the sacred city of Palitana, with its hundreds of temples, some of a date as early as the eleventh, many built within the limits of the present century, and some now in the course of construction; yet, so far as is known, there is not a single archwithin the walls of the city. So it is throughout India: side by side stand the buildings of the two great sects—those belonging to the Mahommedans universally arched, those belonging to the Hindus as certainly avoiding this form of construction. This is the more remarkable as the moment we cross the frontier of India we find the arch universally prevalent in Burmah, as early certainly as the tenth or eleventh century, and in all the forms, round, pointed, and flat, which we use in the present day.[536]But if we extend our researches a little farther east, we again come to a country full of the most wonderful buildings known to exist anywhere, with bridges and viaducts and vaults; but not one single arch has yet been discovered in the length and breadth of the kingdom of Cambodia.

All this is no doubt very anomalous and strange, though, if it were worth while, some of it might be accounted for and explained. This, however, is not the place for doing so: all that is here required is to point out the existence of the apparent anomaly, in order that we may not too hurriedly jump to chronological conclusions from the existence or absence of arches in any given building.

Another most instructive lesson bearing on our present subject that is to be derived from the study of Indian antiquities will be found in that curious but persistent juxtaposition that everywhere prevails of the highest form of progressive civilization beside the lowest types of changeless barbarism. Everywhere in India the past is the present, and the present is the past; not, as is usually assumed, that the Hindu is immutable—quite the contrary. When contemporary history first dawned on us, India was Buddhist, and for eight or nine centuries that was the prevalent religion of the state. There is not now a single Buddhist establishment in the length and breadth of the land. The religions which superseded Buddhism were then new, and have ever since been changing, so that India now contains more religions and more numerous sects than any portion of the world of the same extent. Even within the last six centuries one-fifth of the population have adopted the Mahommedan religion, and are quite prepared to follow any new form offaith that may be the fashion of the day. But beside all this never ceasing change, there are tribes and races which remain immutable.

To take one instance among a hundred that might be adduced. Ougein was a great commercial capital in the days of the Greek. It was the residence of Asoka, 260B.C.[537]It was the Ozene of the Periplus, the capital of the great Vicramaditya in the middle of the fifth century,[538]and it was the city chosen by Jey Sing for the erection of one of his great observatories in the reign of Akbar. Yet almost within sight of this city are to be found tribes of Bhils, living now as they lived long before the Christian era. They are not agricultural, hardly pastoral, but live chiefly by the chase. With their bows and arrows they hunt the wild game as their forefathers did from time immemorial. They never cared to learn to read or write, and have no literature of any sort, hardly any tradition. Yet the Bhil was there before the Brahmin; and the proudest sovereign of Rajpootana acknowledges the Bhil as lord of the soil, and no new successor to the throne considers his title as complete till he has received the tika at the hands of the nomad.[539]If India were a country divided by high mountain-ranges, or impenetrable forests, or did impassable deserts anywhere exist, this co-existence of two forms of society might be accounted for. But the contrary is the case. From the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, no obstacle exists, nor, so far as we know, ever did exist, to the freest intercourse between the various races inhabiting the country. If we may believe the traditions on which the epic of the Ramayana was founded, armies traversed the length and the breadth of the land one thousand, it may be two thousand, years before Christ. The Brahmins carried their arms and their literature to the south at a very early age. The Buddhists spread everywhere. The Jains succeeded them. The Mahommedans conquered and settled in Mysore and the Carnatic, but in vain. The Bhil, the Cole, the Gond, the Toda, and other tribes, remain as they were, and practise their own rites and follow the customs of their forefathers as if the stranger had never come among them.

To turn from these generalities to two instances more directly illustrative of our European experience. The first is that of the Khonds, the Druids of the East, worshipping in groves,priscâ formidine sacris, and indulging in human sacrifices and other unamiable practices of our forefathers.[540]These tribes exist partly on a range of hills bounding the province of Cuttack on the western side and partly extend into the plains themselves. Almost within their boundaries there exists a low range of rocky hills known as the Udyagiri, in which are found a series of Buddhist caves, many of them excavated before the Christian era, and as beautiful and as interesting as any caves in India.[541]A little beyond this are seen the great tower of the Bobaneswar temple and of the hundred and one smaller fanes dedicated to the worship of Siva, which was established here in all its splendour in the seventh century;[542]and a little farther on, rises on the verge of the ocean the great tower of the temple of Juggernaut, at Puri, established in the twelfth century for the worship of that form of Vishnu.[543]Yet in defiance of all this, in close proximity to the shrines of the gentle ascetic who devoted his life to the prevention of the shedding of the blood of the meanest of created beings, in sight of Bobaneswar and Puri, Macpherson tells us, unconsciously almost repeating the words of Tacitus[544]: "The Khonds use neither temples nor images in their worship. They cannotcomprehend and regard as absurd the idea of building a house in honour of a deity, or in the expectation that he will be peculiarly present in any place resembling a human habitation. Groves kept sacred from the axe, hoar rocks, the tops of hills, fountains, and the banks of streams, are in their eyes the fittest places for worship." It was in these sacred and venerable groves, that annually human victims were offered up to appease the wrath of the dreaded Tari, and to procure fertility for the fields. In 1836 we first interfered to put a stop to this, and before the Mutiny believed we had been successful. Perhaps we may have been so, but if our strong repressive hand were once removed, it cannot be doubted but the sacrifices would be instantly resumed. What the Buddhists and the Brahmins, working during at least two thousand years, have failed to accomplish, we strangers cannot expect to succeed in, in a few years, unless indeed we adopt the system followed by our forefathers, and are determined on extirpating those who obstinately adhere to such practices. Had it not been that first the Roman, and then the Celt, by sword and cord set vigorously to improve the older race, we might now have human sacrifices celebrated on the plains of Bauce in the neighbourhood of Chartres, and find people quietly erecting dolmens in the valley of the Dordogne.

The practices, however, of a Claudius or a Simon de Montfort are repugnant to the feelings of the Indians, and so long as no political issue is at stake, they rarely interfere with the religious proclivities of their neighbours.

When from the hills inhabited by the Khonds we cross the delta of the Ganges in a northerly direction, and come to the Khassia hills, we find a very different state of things, but equally interesting as an illustration of our present studies. These hills are situated between the valley of Assam and the plains of Sylhet, and, rising to a height of some 5000 to 6000 feet, catch the rains during the south-west monsoon, and but for this would be one of the most delightful sanitaria of the Bengal province. A country, however, where 300 inches of rain fall in three months is, for at least a quarter of the year, an undesirable abode, and it is difficult also to keep any soil on the rocks. Throughout the whole of the western portion of the hilly region, inhabited by tribes bearing the genericname of Khassias, rude-stone monuments exist in greater numbers than perhaps in any other portion of the globe of the same extent (woodcut No. 200). All travellers who have visited the country have been struck with the fact and with the curious similarity of their forms to those existing in Europe.[545]So like, indeed, are they that it has long been the fashion to assume their identity, and it has consequently been often hoped that, if we could only find out why the Indian examples were erected, we might discover the motive which guided those in Europe who constructed similar monuments, while at the same time there seemed every reason for believing that it would not be difficult to discover the motives which led to the erection of the Indian examples. The natives make no mystery about them, and many were erected within the last few years, or are being erected now, and they are identical in form with those which are grey with years, and must have been set up in the long forgotten past. Here, therefore, there seemed a chance of at last solving the mystery of the great stones. Greater familiarity with them has, however, rather tended to dispel these illusions.

200. View in Khassia Hills. By H. Walters.

The Khassias burn their dead, which is a practice that hardly could have had its origin in their present abodes, inasmuch as, during three months in the year, it is impossible, from the rain, to light a fire out of doors, and consequently, if any one dies during that period, the body is placed in a coffin, formed from the hollowed trunk of a tree, and pickled in honey, till a fair day admits of his obsequies being properly performed.[546]According to Mr. Walters, the urns containing the ashes are placed in little circular cells, with flat tops like stools, which exist in the immediate proximity of all the villages, and are used as seats by the villagers on all state occasions of assembly; but whether one stool is used for a whole family, or till it is filled with urns, or whether a new stool is prepared when a great man dies, has not yet been ascertained.[547]

201. Khassia Funeral Seats. From Yule.

The origin of the menhirs is somewhat different. If any of the Khassia tribe falls ill or gets into difficulties, he prays to some one of his deceased ancestors, whose spirit he fancies may be able and willing to assist him. Father or mother, uncle or aunt, or some more distant relative, may do equally well, and to enforce his prayer, he vows that, if it is granted, he will erect a stone in honour of the deceased.[548]This he never fails to perform, and if the cure has been rapid, or the change in the luck so sudden as to be striking, others address their prayers to the same person, and more stones are vowed. It thus sometimes happens that a person, man or woman, who was by no means remarkable in life, may have five, or seven, or ten—two fives, for the number must always be unequal—in their honour. The centre stone generally is crowned by a capital, or turban-like ornament, and sometimes two are joined together, forming a trilithon, but then theyapparently count as one. Major Austen mentions a set of five being erected in 1869 on the opposite side of the road to an original set of the same number with which an old lady had previously been honoured, in consequence of the services which after her death she had rendered to her tribe.[549]

202. Menhirs and Tables. From Schlagintweit.

203. Turban Stone, with Stone Table.

204. Trilithon.

The origin of the stone tables or dolmens is not so clearly made out. Like the tomb stools, they frequently at least seem to be places of assembly. One, described by Major Austen, measured 30 feet 4 inches by 10 feet in breadth, and had an average thickness of 1 foot; it hadsteps to ascend to it; and certainly it looks like a place from which it would be convenient to address an audience. The great stone of this monument weighed 23 tons 18 cwt., and another is described as measuring 30 feet by 13 feet, and 1 foot 4 inches in thickness, and others seem nearly of the same dimensions; and they are frequently raised some height from the ground, and supported on massive monoliths or pillars.

While this is so, we need not wonder at the masses employed in the erection of Stonehenge or Avebury, or any of our European monuments. Physically the Khassias are a very inferior race to what we can conceive our forefathers ever to have been. Their stage of civilization is barely removed from that of mere savages, and their knowledge of the mechanical arts is of the most primitive description. Add to all this that their country is mountainous and rugged in the highest degree. Yet with all these disadvantages they move these great stones and erect them with perfect facility, while we are lost in wonder because our forefathers did something nearly equal to it some fourteen centuries ago.

There are apparently no circles and no alignments on the hills, nor any of the forms which in the previous pages we have ascribed to battle-fields, and no tumuli nor any of their derivatives, and no sculptured stones of any sort. The real likeness, therefore, between the two forms of art is not so striking as it appears at first sight, but still presents coincidences that it is impossible to overlook.

One of the most curious points which an examination of these two Indian tribes brings to light with reference to the European congeners is that in Cuttack we have sacred groves, human sacrifices, an all-powerful priesthood indulging in divination, and various other peculiarities, all savouring of Druidism, but not one upright stone or stone monument of any sort. In the Khassia hills, on the other hand, we have dolmens, menhirs, trilithons, and most of the forms of rude-stone architecture, but no dominant priesthood, no human sacrifices, no groves, nor anything savouring of the Druidical religion.

To the European student the most interesting fact connected with the monuments on the Khassia hills is probably their date. We do not know how far back they extend, but we do know that many were erected within the limits of the present century, and some within the last few years.Yet this has taken place in presence of, and in immediate contact with, two far higher forms of civilization.

At the foot of the Khassia hills, to the north, lies the famous Hindu kingdom of Kamarupa. How far it extends back to, we do not know, but its foundation was certainly anterior to the Christian era; and when Hiouen Thsang visited it in the beginning of the seventh century, he found it rich and prosperous, and containing "temples by hundreds."[550]And now, in the jungles, ruins are continually being discovered of temples not so old perhaps as this date, but showing continued prosperity down to a far later period. All these temples are richly and elaborately carved and ornamented with that exuberance of detail characteristic of Hindu architecture.

At the foot of the southern slope of the hills lies Sylhet. When it became great, we do not know, but it certainly was occupied by the Mahommedans some centuries ago, and adorned with mosques and palaces and all that magnificence in which the Moslems indulged in the East. Yet the Khassia looks down on these new forms of civilization unmoved. As a servant or a trader he must have been for centuries familiar with both: but he clings to his old faith, and erects his rude-stone monuments, as his forefathers had done from time immemorial, and it is doubtful whether either our soldiers or our missionaries will soon wean him from this strange form of adoration.

Surely all this is sufficient to make us pause before arguing from our own European experiences, or deciding questions when so few facts have hitherto been available on which to base any sound conclusions.

On the other side of India there are some groups of rude-stone monuments similar to those found in the Khassia hills, and apparently erected for similar purposes. They are, however, much less perfectly known, and are described or at least drawn by only one traveller.[551]The most conspicuous of these is one near Belgaum. It consists of two rows of thirteen stones each, and one in front of them of three stones—the numbers being always uneven, as in Bengal—and on the opposite side four of those small altars, or tables, which always accompany these groups of stones on the Khassia hills. These, however, are very much smaller, the central stone being only about 4 feet high, and falling off to about a foot in height at the end of each row.[552]Whether they were or were not dedicated to the same purpose, Colonel Leslie does not inform us; but their resemblance is so marked that there seems very little doubt that they were dedicated or vowed to the spirits of deceased ancestors.

Another class of circular fanes looks at first sight more promising as a means of comparison with ours. Generally they seem to consist of one or three stones, in front of which a circular space—in the largest instance 40 feet in diameter, but more generally 20 to 30 feet only—is marked out by a number of small stones, from 8 to 20 inches in height, while the great central stones are only 3 feet high. To compare these, therefore, with our great megalithic monuments seems rather absurd. So far as can be made out, the central stone seems to represent a local village deity, called Vetal or Betal, who, like Nadzu Pennu, the village god, one of the inferior deities of the Khonds, is familiarly represented merely by a rude-stone, placed under a tree.[553]In the instance of Vetal, it seems when a sacrifice—generally of a cock—is to be made, all those who are interested bring their own stones, and arrange them, in a circular fashion, round the place where the ceremony is to be performed; hence the superficial likeness. None, so far as is known, are ancient, nor indeed has it at all been made out when and how the worship of this deity arose. It is evidently a local superstition of some of the indigenous tribes, which latterly under our tolerant rule has become more prominent, for the sect is hated and despised by the Brahmins; and so far as facts are concerned, it would be difficult to carry back the history of this form ofarchitecture for a hundred years from this time. It may be older, but there is nothing to show that it is so.

So far as the monuments above mentioned are concerned, there seems nothing in them that affords a real analogy or establishes any direct connexion between the European and Indian examples. The sacrifice of a cock to Vetal, when in sickness, looks like a similar sacrifice to Esculapius, and the human sacrifices and sacred groves of the Khonds are very Druidical in appearance; but no one probably will be found to contend that Vetal and Esculapius are the same god, or that the Khonds are Celts; and without this being established, the argument halts. The case, however, seems different when we turn to the sepulchral arrangements of the aboriginal tribes of India. Here the analogies are so striking that it is hard to believe that they are accidental, though equally hard to understand how and when the intercourse could have taken place which led to their similarity.

205. Dolmen at Rajunkoloor. From a drawing by Colonel Meadows Taylor.

206. Plan of Open Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.

207. Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.

208. View of Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.

As in Europe, the sepulchral monuments of India may be divided into two great classes—the dolmens and the tumuli. In the present state of our knowledge it is difficult to say which are the more numerous. According to Colonel Meadows Taylor,[554]who is our best authority on the subject, the dolmens are oftwo kinds—those consisting of four stones, that is to say, three supporting stones and one cap-stone—thus leaving one side open—and those in which the chamber is closed by a fourth stone; in the latter case this fourth stone has invariably a circular opening in it, like the Circassian examples (woodcutsNos. 192,193), and the dolmen at Trie (No. 127). These forms are both shown in woodcut No. 205, representing two at Rajunkoloor, in the province of Sholapore, between the Bheema and Kistnah, near their junction. The side-stones of the larger monument measure 15 feet 3 inches by 9 feet in height, and more than 1 foot in thickness. The cap-stone is 15 feet 9 inches by 10 feet 9 inches, and the internal space 8 feet by 6 feet, the third slab being placed at some distance from the rear, and between the two side-stones. The same arrangement is followed in the closed dolmen, the cross slabs being inside, as shown in the view (woodcut No. 208), and plan (woodcut No. 207). The interior of the closed dolmen contained a little black mould on the surface. Below this a greyish white earth, brought from a distance, with which were found human ashes and portions of bones and charcoal mixed, and pieces of broken pottery, red and black. These rested on the solid rock on which the dolmen was erected. Nothing whatever was found in any of the open dolmens; but whether this arose from their being plundered, or from being exposed, is not clear. It could hardly have been that they were not sepulchral. They seem at least to be mixed up indiscriminately with the others, and except their being open, there is nothing to distinguish them. The arrangement of these dolmens in plan is peculiar. As will be seen from the next woodcut (No. 209), they are as regular as in our cemeteries, and apparently in certain directions would havegone on extendingad infinitum; but in another direction are cairns irregularly spaced, and showing a distinction in the mode of burying which at present it is difficult to account for.

At a place in the Raichore Doab, called Yemmee Gooda, four of the dolmens of the first class were surrounded by double circles of stones; but this does not seem to be a usual arrangement.

209. Arrangement of Dolmens at Rajunkoloor. By Colonel Meadows Taylor.

Almost more interesting than the dolmens are the cairns. The following plan of the group at Jewurgi, a place fifty miles, as the crow flies, north-east from Rajunkoloor, will explain their arrangement and juxtaposition. They, too, seem to divide themselves into two classes, as shown in the two sections—those with a summit-cist, like those in Auvergne, and those without; all, however, apparently have single and double circles of stones surrounding them. Two stones are generally found protruding slightly through the surface of the tumulus, and when an excavation is made between them, the cist is found laid in their direction at a depth of 9 to 10 feet below the surface. This seems to be generally double, and contains skeletons laid on their faces. At one end, but outside the cist, are quantities of pottery, and above the cist a number of skeletons, thrown in pellmell, and over these athick layer of earth and gravel. Detached heads are found sometimes in the cists, sometimes outside among the pottery, which led Colonel Taylor to the conclusion that human sacrifices had been practised at the time these cairns were raised, and that these are the remains of the wives or slaves of the defunct. It may be so, but it may also be that, as in Europe, we must make a distinction between battle-fieldsand cemeteries; and I confess the idea that the cairns at Jewurgi mark a battle-field, and the dolmens at Rajunkoloor a cemetery, appears to account for the phenomena better than the other hypothesis. If this is not so, as the distance between Rajunkoloor and Jewurgi is only fifty miles, we must assume either that the district was inhabited by two different races of men at the same time, practising different modes of sepulture, or we must concede that the one is older than the other, and that the one race had been dispossessed and was succeeded by the other. The difficulties attending either of these suppositions appear to me infinitely greater than those involved in assuming that the one is a battle-field, the other a cemetery. The only thing that would make me hesitate about this is the presence of several cairns at Rajunkoloor. These, however, do not appear to have been opened, and we do not consequently know whether the same instances of decapitation were to be found, or whether the bodies were arranged in the same manner as at Jewurgi.

210. Cairns at Jewurgi. By Colonel Meadows Taylor.

CAPTION211. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.

211. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.

212. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.

Be this as it may, if these sections are to be depended on, it appears to be tolerably certain that these tombs cannot be old. It seems impossible that human bones could remain so entire and perfect as these are represented to be, so near the surface and in a recently disturbed soil, where rain and moisture must easily have penetrated at all times. A medical man on the spot might determine whether two or three or five centuries have elapsed since these bodies were laid where they are found; but I should be very much surprised if he raised their date beyond the last named figure. It is hazardous, however, to pronounce on such questions from the scanty data we have before us.

There is still another class of dolmens, or rather kistvaens, common on the Nilgiri hills and throughout the hill region of Malabar. In it the chamber is formed like those described above, but always buried in the earth, only showing the cap-stone flush with the surface of the soil. One of these, in the Coorg country, is worth quoting, from its possessing two circular apertures, like those of the Plas Newydd tumulus (woodcut No. 48). This one, however, has a diaphragm dividing it into two chambers. If the Welsh one was so partitioned, the wall has disappeared.

213. Double Dolmen, Coorg.[555]

214. Tomb, Nilgiri Hills. From a drawing by Sir Walter Elliot.

One other class of monument must be quoted, not as illustrating any of our examples, but because it is so nearly identical with the chouchas[556]of Northern Africa (woodcut No. 165), and when we try to find out whether there was any real connexion between the East and theWest, such examples may afford valuable flints. According to Sir Walter Elliot,[557]they are the commonest, or rather, perhaps, the most conspicuous, being perched on the tops of hills or ridges. Their form is a circular wall of uncemented rough stones, 4 to 5 feet high, 3 feet thick, and 6 to 8 feet in diameter.

215. Sepulchral Circles at Amravati.

One other variety is interesting, not only from its similarity to those in Europe, especially in Scandinavia, but also from its bearing on the question of the age of those in India. The sepulchres of this class are all very like one another, and consist of small circles of rude stones, generally of two dimensions only, 24 and 32 feet in diameter, and have something like an opening on one side, and opposite this two or three stones within the circle, apparently marking the position of the sepulchral deposit.[558]Monuments very similar to these exist in the Nilgiri hills, and elsewhere in India,[559]but they are principally found at the roots of the hills round Amravati, where they exist literally in hundreds. No one, probably, who studies Colonel Mackenzie's map of that district[560]will doubt that they form the cemetery of the city of Dharani Kotta, to which the Amravati Tope is attached. As in China, burying in the fertile land was not allowed, and consequently the place selected for the graves of the inhabitants was the nearest uncultivated spot, which was the foot of the hills. So far as is at present known, these circulargraves exist nowhere in such numbers as here, and it can hardly be doubted but that they have some connexion with the great circular rail of the Amravati Tope. That rail is unique in India, whether we consider its extent, the beauty of its sculptures, or the elaborateness of its finish. Other rails exist elsewhere surrounding dagobas or sacred spots, but none where the circle itself is relatively so much greater and more magnificent than the surrounding objects. The question thus arises, did the Amravati circle grow out of the rude-stone graves that cluster round the hills in its neighbourhood, or are the rude circles humble copies of that pride of the city? I have myself no doubt that the latter is the true explanation of the phenomena; but the grounds for this conclusion will be clearer as we proceed. Meanwhile it is hardly worth while enumerating all the smaller varieties of form which the rude-stone sepulchres of the Indians took in former days. Their numbers in many classes are few, and have no direct bearing on the subject of our enquiries.

Nothing would tend more to convey clear ideas on the subject of Indian dolmens than a map of their distribution, were it possible to construct one. As, however, no nation even in Europe, except France, is in a position to attempt such a thing, it is in vain to expect that sufficient information for the purpose should exist in India, where the subject has been taken up only so recently in so sporadic a manner.[561]The following sketch, however, is perhaps not very far from the truth regarding them. They do not exist in the valley of the Ganges, or of any of its tributaries, nor in the valleys of the Nerbudda or Taptee; not, in fact, in that part of India which is generally described as north of the Vindhya range of hills. They exist, though somewhat sparsely, over the whole of the country drained bythe Godavery and its affluents. They are very common, perhaps more frequent than in any other part of India, in the valleys of the Kistnah and its tributaries. They are also found on both sides of the Ghâts, through Coimbatore, all the way down to Cape Comorin; and they are also found in groups all over the Madras presidency, but especially in the neighbourhood of Conjeveran.

The first inference one is inclined to draw from this is that they must be Dravidian, as contradistinguished from Aryan; and it may be so. But against this view we have the fact that all the races at present dominant in the south repudiate them: none use similar modes of burial now, nor do any object to our digging them up and destroying them.

If we look a little deeper, we come to a race of Karumbers, to whom Sir Walter Elliot is inclined to ascribe the bulk of the rude-stone monuments.[562]From his own researches, and the various documents contained in the Mackenzie MSS.,[563]they seem to have been a powerful race in the south of India, from the earliest times to which our knowledge extends, and to have continued powerful about Conjeveran and Madras till say the tenth or eleventh centuries, when they were overpowered by the Cholas, and finally disappear from the political horizon before the rising supremacy of that triumvirate of powers, the Chola, Chera, Pandya, who governed the south till the balance of power was disturbed by the Mahommedan and Maharatta invasions.

A wretched remnant of these Karumbers still exists on the Nilgiri hills, and about the roots of the western Ghâts, but without a literature or a history, or even traditions that would enable us to identify or distinguish them from any of the other races of the south. The only test that seems capable of application is that of language, and this philologers have determined to be a dialect of the Dravidiantongues.[564]But, in such a case as this, language is a most unsafe guide. Within recent times the Cornish have changed their language without any alteration of race, and if intercommunication goes on at its present rate, English, in a century or two, may be the only language spoken in these islands. From the names of places we would know that Celtic races had inhabited many localities, but from the tongue of the people we should not know now that the Cornish, or then that the Welsh, were more Celtic than the inhabitants of Yorkshire or the Lothians. So in India nothing seems more likely than that, during the last eight or ten centuries, the Tamulian or Dravidian influence should have spread northward to the Vindhya, and that the Gonds, the Karumbers, and other subject half-civilized races, should have adopted the language of their conquerors and masters. It may be otherwise, but we know certainly that the southern Dravidians brought their style of architecture—as difficult a thing to change almost as language—as far north as Ellora, and carved the imperishable rocks there, in the eighth or ninth century, in the style that was indigenous at Tanjore;[565]and this, too, for the purpose of marking their triumph over the religion of Buddha, which they had just succeeded in abolishing in the south.

If this is so, there are still two distinguishing features which may help us to discriminate between the candidates for the rude-stone monuments. The true Dravidians—the Chola, Chera, Pandya—never were Buddhists, and never put forward a claim to have erected any monuments of this class. The Karumbers were Buddhists, and claim these monuments; and Buddhism and such structures must, I fancy, for reasons to be given hereafter, always have gone together.

Further researches may enable us to speak with precision on the subject, but all we can at present do is to except, first, the Aryans of the north, and all the people incorporated with them, from the charge of being builders of rude-stone monuments. We must also exceptthe Tamulians or pure Dravidians of the south. But between these two there must have been some race, whom, for the present at least, we may call Karumbers. One of their centres of power was Conjeveran, but from that they were driven, as far as I can make out, about the year 750. But it does not appear that they might not have existed as a power on the banks of the Upper Kistnah and Tongabudra to a much later period.

The limits of the Chalukya kingdom, which arose at Kalyan early in the seventh century,[566]and of that of Vijianagara, which was established in the Tongabudra in the fourteenth, are so nearly coincident with the limits of the dolmen region—except where the latter was compressed on the north by the Mahommedan kingdom of Beejapore—that it seems most probable that there must have been a homogeneity among the people of that central province of which we have now lost the trace.

This, however, like many other questions of the sort, must be postponed till we know something of the Nizam's country. In so far as the history or ethnography of the central plateau of India is concerned, or its arts or architecture, the Nizam's dominions are absolutely aterra incognita. No one has visited the country who had any knowledge of these subjects, and the Indian Government has done nothing to enquire, or to stimulate enquiry, into these questions in that country. Yet, if I am not very much mistaken, the solution of half the difficulties, ethnological or archæological, that are now perplexing us lies on the surface of that region, for anyone who will take the trouble to read them. Till this is done, we must, it is feared, be content with the vaguest generalities; but even now I fancy we are approaching a better state of knowledge in these matters, and I almost believe I can trace a connexion between our so-called Karumbers and the Singalese, which, if it can be sustained, will throw a flood of light on some of the most puzzling questions of Indian ethnography.

A glimmering of light seemed to be thrown on this subject by a passage quoted by Sir Walter Elliot from a missionary report from Travancore, in which it was stated that an Indian tribe still continued to bury in "cromlechs," like those of Coimbatore, "constructed with four stones and a covering one."[567]If this were so, we might have got hold of one end of a thread which would lead us backwards through the labyrinth. It looked so like a crucial instance that Mr. Walhouse kindly wrote to Mr. Baker, the author of the report in question, and sent me an extract from his reply, which is curious. "The M[a]la Arryians are a race of men dwelling in dense jungles and hills. Cromlechs are common among them, and they worship the spirits of their ancestors, to whom they make annual offerings. At the present day they are accustomed to take corpses into the sacred groves, and place small slabs of stones, in the form of a box, and, after making offerings of arrack, sweetmeats, &c., to the departed spirit, supposed to be hovering near, a small stone is placed in the model box or vault, and it is covered over with great ceremony. The spirit is supposed to dwell in the stone, which in many cases is changed at the annual feast into a rough silver or brass figure." As Mr. Walhouse remarks, this looks like an echo from megalithic times. The people, having lost the power of erecting such huge structures as abound in their hills and on the plains around, from which they may have been driven at some early period, are content still to keep up the traditions of a primæval usage by these miniature shams. There seems little doubt that this is the case, and it is especially interesting to have observed it here, as it accounts for what has often puzzled Indian antiquaries. In Coorg and elsewhere, miniature urns and miniature utensils, such as one sees used as toys in European nurseries, are often found in these tombs, and have given rise to a tradition among the natives that they belong to a race of pigmies: whereas it is evident that it is only a dying out of an ancient faith, when, as is so generally the case, the symbol supersedes the reality.

The articles found in the cairns and dolmens in India unfortunately afford us very little assistance in determining their age. The pottery that is found in quantities in them everywhere, is to all appearances, identical in form, in texture, and in glaze with the pottery of the present day. No archaic forms have, so far as I know, been found anywhere, nor anything that would indicate a progression. This might be used as an argument to prove how modern they were. In India, however, it would be most unsafe to do so. We have no knowledge as to how long ago these forms were introduced into or invented in that country, and no reason to suppose that they would change and progress as ours do. So far as our present knowledge extends, the pottery found in these tombs may have been made within the last few centuries, but it may also be a thousand or two thousand years old for anything we know to the contrary.

The same remarks apply to the gold and silver ornaments and generally to the trinkets found in the tombs. Similar objects may be picked up in the bazaars in remote districts at the present day, but they may also have been in use in the time of Alexander the Great. Iron spear-heads and iron utensils of the most modern shape and pattern are among the commonest objects found in these tombs; and if anyone were arguing for victory, and not for the truth, these might be adduced to prove that the tombs belonged to what the Germans call "the youngest Iron age." This reasoning has no application whatever to India. Flint implements are found there, and very similar to those of Europe, but never in the tombs. Bronze was probably known to the Indians at a remote age, but no bronze implements have been buried with the dead so far as we yet know, though iron has been, and that frequently; but its presence tells us nothing as to age. So far we know, the Indians were as familiar with the use of iron in the fourth centuryB.C.as the Greeks themselves were, and, for anything we know to the contrary, may have understood the art of extracting it from the ore and using it for arms and cutting-tools before these arts were practised in Europe.

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