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APRIL, 1881.]
In a small unroofed kist tomb, half-full of solid earth, two of the terra-cotta many-legged troughs were found with pottery and bones as usual, and a few beads of a necklace lying on the floor-slab near the remains of a skull. All or nearly all the pottery was marked with the usual scratches, (the arrow point A, the asterisk or double cross, the two triangles, &c.), and amongst it was the fragment of a little bowl with some writing on it, apparently Tamil (FL)?" Chathut." I found no more writing here, but on some pieces of small pots taken from some stone circles near Old Arkât, a short time since I found some other scraps of writing. From the shape of the Tamil letters it appears that this writing can be of no great antiquity, three to five centuries perhaps.
In fig. 2 may be seen a stone slab standing in front (east) of a flat-topped slab-monument at the distance of a few yards. It has a rounded top with a curved notch in it. Several of these tall notched slabs are to be seen standing about, mostly single in front of the tombs, but here and there in groups, as if they had formed an enclosure from 20 to 30 feet in diameter. Two such circular enclosures remained almost complete, in one case of nine or ten flattopped slabs about 6 feet high, 2 or 3 feet wide, and 2 or 3 inches thick, all of them notched in the middle of the top: the other of eight slabs, 7 feet high and 5 feet wide, with double notches on top of each. In both instances the tall slabs alternate with low flat-headed slabs which complete the circle. Another pair of large half-buried slabs shewed a projecting spike, tenon, or pivot point, one on the top of each, out of the centre.
The Irala banda-Bâpanattam necropolis, or tomb-tield, is on the highlands above the Eastern Ghats, and in the Palma nêri taluk of the North Arkât district. The spot is marked Yerlabundah on the Indian Atlas Sheet No. 78. It lies some 6 miles by bridle path, east from Baireddipalle (via Nellipaṭla), whence there is a road to Palmanêri, 15 miles distant.
OLD SLAB-STONE MONUMENTS.
This is not the only necropolis of the kind, but perhaps the most interesting one yet brought to notice.
Ten or twelve miles to the S.S.W., at or near Nayakanêri (Naickenairy of Ind. Atlas, sh. 78) is a group of two or three score of the
⚫ Photographs of a few of the Iralabanda Bapanattam monuments may be had from Girthari Lal, Chintadripet,
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same kind of slab-stone monuments, mentioned, with a sketch by Colonel Welsh in his Military Reminiscences (1830), an extract of which is given at p. 160 vol. V of the Indian Antiquary (May 1876). I sent messengers who had visited fra la banda to examine and report upon the Nayakanori group. They state that the monuments at the latter are much like those at the former, only they are fewer and more ruined: also that the curves of the round-headed slabs were rather flatter than a semicircle.
When examining the extensive tomb-field at Sâ van durga, 23 miles west of Bengalûr, last summer (1879), I first noticed some single half-round slabs pierced with a hole, set up in front of some of the kistvaens there: and they seemed so singular that I enquired diligently for more, and sent messengers in search, having never heard or read any mention of them, or seen a sketch. After some time I heard of an extensivo tomb-field with many of the roundheaded slab-stone monuments still standing, and being very accessible, I visited it. The site is at Aneguṭṭahalli (Elephant-rock-ville), nearly four miles, or about an hour's walk, south from Tyâkal or Tekkal on the line of the Madras-Bengalûr Railway. I found a very extensive necropolis, but, as usual, most of the monuments have been destroyed by the country stonemasons. I saw no boulder circles, but all the tombs seem to have been of the roundtopped slab-stone kind, only not quite so large as some of those at İralabanda.
Most of the Anegutta halli kistvaens are vacant, but on opening one that seemed intact, it was found to contain an interment of human remains with a little pottery, and two of the many-legged terra-cotta coffers, of precisely the same kind as those found so frequently to the eastward in N. and South Arkát. I have not heard of any further west as yet. One peculiarity was-that a pan of incinerated fragments of human bones was found deposited in the porch immediately outside the entrance hole of the sepulchral chamber. There was the same scarcity of iron in the deposit that I noticed at Irala banda.*
The fifth place where I have found this type of slab-stone monuments, is Govind-Reḍḍipalle near Gâzula palle, some twelve miles
Madras; and of the Aneguttahalli monuments from Messrs. Orr and Barton, Bangalore.
