Indian Antiquary Vol 08

SR No.: 032500
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 404
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 187

ARCHEOLOGICAL NOTES.
JUNE, 1879.]
unquestionably devotional, and so, I think, is the remarkable cromlech at Pallikonda, 12 miles from Vellur, in the Madras Presidency, which I examined many years ago, and which is the only true cromlech or free-standing dolmen with no subterranean or kistvaen character about it, that I have seen or heard of, on the plains. A figure inadequately representing its massiveness and actual appearance will be found at p. 491 of Mr. Fergusson's Rude Stone Monuments, taken from a notice of it by Captain Congreve in No. 31 of the Madr. Jour. of Lit. & Science, Old Series. The capstone of this cromlech is 12 feet long by 8 wide and about 2 thick, supported not by slabs, but by six large round boulder-like masses of granite, two at the north end, two at the south, two smallernot touching the capstone-on the west side, and the east side open. The capstone is elevated about 8 feet from the ground, and on its upper centre are four round depressions, placed thus,
that to the right being smallest. These cavities seem to me to be analogous to the "cupmarks" so often found on megaliths and stones in the north of England, and occurring, as Mr. Rivett-Carnac has informed us, on prehistoric monuments in Nâgpur. Mr. Fergusson terms this megalith "a sepulchral mound," but it gave me no such idea, for it stands upon a bare granite platform with no soil or means for interment beneath; its purpose rather seemed that of a temple or altar. I have met with no similar monument in Madras, unless it be in Kurg, where, on the summit of a hill near Somavârpeta, there are four large cromlechs, not closed, but consisting of huge overlying slabs supported on masses of stone. The largest slab is 11 feet long by 8 wide. Each cromlech is surrounded by a circle of stones, had never been covered with earth, and nothing connected with interments could be found in or about them. Standing out in high relief on the hill-top, their appearance is certainly suggestive of altars.
Belonging to a different but also non-sepulchral class of rude stone monuments must be the Máni, or long heaps of stones,-like lengthened
It may not be out of place to annex Sir H. Pottinger's account of some other remarkable antiquities, probably. never before or since seen by an European, observed by him in the same region. Several miles beyond Nushki, on the west bank of the river Bale, he passed the remains of
165
cairns, that excite the surprise of travellers in Tibet and Tatary. The late Mr. C. Horne, of the Bengal C.S., who several years ago travelled over some of the highest Himalayan passes, wrote me respecting them:-"The Lama Tatârs build long walls of loose stones, usually about 6 feet thick and 8 high; sometimes, as at Nako, half a mile long. Every native passes them to his right: none seem to know why: hence there is a path worn on that side, and every one adds a stone; they must be the growth of centuries, every generation adding some yards. A great mystery attaches to them: none can explain their intention certainly: some say they are devotional, others that they were built on return from long journeys. The furthest object I saw in Tatary was a long double range of these walls." Mr. Andrew Wilson lately, in his Abode of Snow, mentions having passed hundreds of these Máni on his journey, sometimes in the most desolate situations, and remarks that the prodigious number of them in so thinly peopled a country indicates an extraordinary waste of human energy. It may be added, too, that Major Godwin Austen has shown that the multitudinous groups of upright stones that so remarkably characterize the Khâsiâ Hills have no connection with burials, but are memorials raised to propitiate the spirits of the deceased.
Passing from India westward, Mr. Masson relates that in the temple at the foot of the Koh Assa Mahi (Hill of the Great Mother) near Kabul "a huge stone is the object of adoration," and again he affirms that the mysterious Siaposh worship "an erect black or dark-coloured stone the size of a man." The late Sir Henry Pottinger in his Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde, published in 1816, observed near Nushki on the Beluchistan border, west of Kelat, some very large stones by the wayside, and was told they had been placed there by Rustam to commemorate the strides of his favourite horse; their transport from the nearest mountains must have been very laborious and costly, many of them being several tons weight, and 6 or 7 yards high." (p. 123.)" Little appears to be known of megalithic
"C
some very extraordinary tombs, of quadrangular shape, each surrounded by a low wall of curious open freestone work, like the meshes of a net stretched into a conical shape. These walls enclosed an area of 4 or 5 square yards, the entrances fronting due east, and inside each a