Indian Antiquary Vol 10

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 17

JANUARY, 1881.]
SÅVANDURGA RUDE STONE CEMETERY.
even and flat thin slab of dark stone, and is well shaped by rough chipping or hammer-dressing, into a rounded arch form at top with a hole of the same rounded shape as most of the entrance holes to these kistvaens, that is, flatter than the true circle, below, and more pointed above, but without any great difference between the height and the width, which in the few instances I have met has been from 20 to 30". One or two other tombs in this group had broken arch-stones, but much smaller than that here described, which stands over 5' high above the ground on the inside, and more still on the out, and must have been about 8 wide when entire. The only other one I measured stood 3 high above ground, and must have been about 6'-6" wide, with a hole 24" wide and high.
General Remarks, Notes and Impressions, &c.
The hoge capstones must have been put on after the chambers they cover had been filled with earth, for, in some cases, the kist is full but has no entrance hole at all, or the entrance is too low to admit of the chamber being filled through it.
Standing on & spur or plateau of rising ground with deep ravines around, they cannot have been subject to floods, and the rain could not have washed in so much soil through the crevices, from a mound of earth that may have been raised over them originally, without also leaving some portion of it spread around.
The "site" may be a cemetery, or place of interment, selected perhaps for its seclusion in the depths of the forest, and for the convenience of the locality for the requisite materials,-stone slabs of all sizes, boulders, and a suitable space of ground near to the quarry. The prominent rounded masses of solid bare rock, cropping up like islands above the general level of the soil, so common in Southern India, offer great facilities and frequent opportunities for the purpose.
The gneissic rock is laminated, and peels off, or is easily exfoliated in scales of any size, and may be transported on log rollers down the sloping spurs without difficulty. The rounded boulders are to be found in the adjacent ravines.
The form of the kistvaen, a cubical chamber surrounded by a circle of stones, is perhaps
only a copy of the dwellings of the people who built them.
In many parts of India people still live in houses of a somewhat similar shape, composed of four upright walls of mud, covered by a flat mud roof; but the huts or cabins of the Toda folk of the Nilgiri Hills afford a closer parallel, allowance being made for the difference of material and the structural necessities of the case, for they are surrounded in a similar way by a circular wall or enclosure, and have an entrance hole at one end as small as these. The customs still in vogue amongst the (quasi)aboriginal tribes, Toda, Kota, Gond, Kol, Khasia, &c. would probably, if collated, go far to explain all about these kistvaens, and the rites that attended their use.
Occasionally a patriarch or headman may have died under circumstances that forbade the rite of cremation, when he might be buried in a monumental sepulchre built specially for the occasion, and in a manner that would leave all the appearances described above, as found in the case of the first kistvaen (No. 1) opened at Så vandurga.
The raised couch or bed-stone, the number of iron implements and weapons found associated with the remains of a single unburnt skeleton, and possibly also the fractured skull point to an unusual case, and indicate that the person here buried had been a warrior, or a great hunter
In the 2nd instance (kist. No. 2) the thin flakes of bone contained in the smaller bowl may be those of a wife who became sati upon the funeral pile of the person whose calcined remains were found in the larger.
The 3rd kist opened, that surrounded by a triple circle of stones with its two bowls of ashes (one large and one small), may indicate another case of cromation and sati. The long javelin head and single knife blade was a disappointingly small find in so fine a kistvaen.
The last kist excavated (No. 4) with its three (or more) cinerary urns fall of ashes, and its 30 accompanying earthen vessels, and the entire absence of iron weapons, may indicate the sepulchural monument of several minor members of the tribe or family, who had died at the
• See Welsh's Military Reminiscences (Smith, Elder and Co., 1830), vol. II, p. 55, where a cromlech or kistvaen with arched entrance stone is figured and described. The
stone wall there given recalls the rail round a Buddhist T ope remarkably.