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98
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[APRIL, 1881.
small that they could not have been intended wide: and the whole place looks very much for the entry or exit of human beings in the like a field of tombstones with many rude flesh, being only 4 or 5 inches in diameter.' stone hats and kennels interspersed. Sometimes there are three or four holes behind Many of the vaults were examined and found one another, one in each row, but not in a line so vacant, but most had a deposit of soil from 1} that the rising sun could shine, or any one to 3 feet in depth, which, on excavation, yielded see, through them all at once. More usually, the usual sepulchral relics found so universally however, the outer row or two rows have no in the stone-circle graves of Southern India, hole, but merely a semicircular depression or except that iron weapons were very scarce or notch in the easternmost slab of each ring. Most entirely absent, whilst the terra-cotta burial of the slabs are very thin, from 2 to 4 inches coffers, or many-legged sarcophagus troughs, thick only, except the capstone which may be were abundant, as in the lowland cemeteries of from 5 to 9 inches. They bear no trace of Madras. Many of the larger chambers have the mason's chisel, but have been very cleverly been and are still, I believe, occasionally occupied split from the bluish-grey gneiss rock which by wild men of the woods, Íralar, I was told, abounds in the neighbourhood, and then neatly (? Irular) during the rainy season. And the chipped into shape. The quarry was appar- place may have received its name from them; ently on the spot, from the great quantities | Irala-banda (Rock of the Iralar). of fragments strewn about or collected in large For convenience they (or others) have broken Heaps. Modern villagers and stone masons away the surrounding slabs and radely enlarged have drawn upon them largely for big slabs, the inner entrance hole, and apparently in some and rathless demolition has, in many cases, cases have cleared out the interior. completed natural dilapidation in the course In the case of fig. 1 all the slabs on the N. E. of time.
side had been broken down or removed, the All the slab-surrounded monuments at ira! entrance holo roughly enlarged and a great la banda are not of the semi-round-headed portion of the projecting roof-slab overbanging pattern described above (fig. 1), but differ only the porch broken away. The original deposit from them by having all the erect slabs in each of earth had not been removed apparently, but circle of the same height, as shown in fig. 2; was covered to a depth of several inches by the neither are they all so regular as these exam- ashes of recent fires and the debris of compara. ples, but some have the slabs of the inner and tively recent cookery, &c. The whole of the soil highest circle irregularly placed and the eastern by its looseness and admixture with ashes would slabs considerably higher, as in fig. 3.
seem to have been disturbed, for pottery of the The plan, section, and front view or elera- obsolete kind usually found in these graves was tion of one of these slab-monuments restored, only found in broken and scattered fragments, and (rige. 4-6) are drawn from the average of several the remains of an old human interment in the of the least dilapidated. Of the largest round- shape of fragments of human skull and other hended sort above described, there are probably bones. In another sepulchre with only 5 or 6 a score or more still standing, incomplete and inches of soil, little or nothing was found, ruined, and as many more of the flat-topped except in a corner where a piece of the floorpattern. But dividing the tombs in this ceme- slab was gone, and the space filled with a large tery into three classes, 170 were counted of the deposit of the old pottery and bones. But the biggest, 210 of the second, and 200 of the third largest deposits were found in the smaller or or smallest sort, a simple kist made of slabsmiddle-sized kists; several of which were full from 2 feet square and upwards, more or less of interred pottery and human relics, generally buried in the earth and without any circle of accompanied by the many-legged terra-cotta surrounding slabs or stones at all. The necro- coffers, some of which were highly ornamental polis probably contained many tnore than 600 with a chain pattern in festoons, dependent tombs within an area 500 yards long by 300 from projecting loops and hooks.
? One of the ruined kistraons at Anegattahalli has but one very small hole (3in diameter), and that is in the round topped slab still standing on the north side of the chamber.
3 The dimensions of this kistvaen were interior 107" E. to W.,89' N. to S., 85' high. Capstone or roof-slab 15' by 13' entrance hole, in 'he east end, rudely cularged to 36' high by 2 wide.
