# Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII.
INDIA.
The number 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 years B.C., as I believe, or two thousand B.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 513 B.C.), describe a country with cities and palaces, and possessing a very high state of civilzation; 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 negative proof, we have in the early caves, 150 to 200 B.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 very incunabula of 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, and something like a Persepolitan capital in some of the earlier caves, but these died out, and it is not till after five centuries that we really find anything like the arts of Bactria at Amravati. 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 rooted 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 1206 A.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. 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. 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 arch within 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. 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 of faith 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, 260 B.C. It was the Ozene of the Periplus, the capital of the great Vicramaditya in the middle of the fifth century, 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. 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.
Eastern India.
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. 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. 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; 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. 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: "The Khonds use neither temples nor ​images in their worship. They cannot comprehend 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 generic ​name 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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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—erected 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 they apparently 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.
| 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 had steps 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." 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 Sylbet. 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.
Western India.
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. 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. 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. 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 of architecture 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.
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, who is our best ​authority on the subject, the dolmens are of two 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 (woodcuts Nos. 192, 193), and the dolmen at Trie (No. 127). These forms are both shown in woodcut No. 205, representing two at Kajunkoloor, 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.
206. Plan of Open Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.
207. Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.
208. View of Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.
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 have gone on extending ad 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 a thick layer of earth and gravel. Detached heads are found sometimes in the cists, sometimes outside
210. Cairns at Jewurgi. By Colonel Meadows Taylor.
among the pottery, which led Colonel Taylor to the conclusion that human sacrifices had been practised at the time these cairns
211. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.
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,
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.
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 of Northern Africa (woodcut No. 165), and when we try to find out whether there was any real connexion between the East ​and the West, such examples may afford valuable hints. According to Sir Walter Elliot, 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. Monuments very similar to these exist in the Nilgiri hills, and elsewhere in India, 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 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 circular graves 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.
Geographical Distribution.
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. 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 by the 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. From his own researches, and the various documents contained in the Mackenzie MSS., 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 Dravidian tongues. But, in such a case as this, language is a most unsafe guide. Witliiu 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; 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 except the 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, 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 a terra 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.
Age of the Stone Monuments.
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." 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 Măla 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 century B.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.
One of the most curious and interesting illustrations of this is found in the existence of the celebrated iron pillar of Dhava, in the courtyard of the mosque at the Kutub, near Delhi. This ​consists of a solid shaft of wrought iron, standing 22 feet 6 inches out of the ground and is 5 feet 6 inches in circumference at about 5 feet from its base. When I visited it, the report was that Colonel
216. Iron Pillar at the Kutub, Delhi. From a photograph.
Baird Smith had dug down and found its base 16 feet below the surface. Lieutenant Cole now brings home a report that it is 26 feet deep in the ground. Taking, however, the more moderate ​dimension, a single forging nearly 40 feet long and 5 feet circumference was not made, and could not have been made, in any country of Europe before the introduction of steam-machinery, nor, indeed, before the invention of the Nasmyth hammer.
There is an inscription on the pillar which, unfortunately, bears no date; but from the form of the characters, the nature of the event it describes, coupled with the architecture of the capital of the pillar, it leaves no doubt that it was erected in the third or fourth century of our era.
It must be left to those practically skilled in the working of metals to explain how any human being could work in close proximity to such a mass heated to a welding heat, or how it was possible without steam-machinery to manipulate so enormous a bar of iron. The question that interests us here is, how long must the Hindus have been familiar with the use of iron and the mode of working it before they could conceive the idea of such a monument and carry it into execution? It could hardly have been centuries, it must have been nearer thousands of years, and yet they erect rude-stone monuments in India at the present day!
One other instance, at the lower end of the scale, may be quoted as also bearing directly on this subject. Of all the people of India the Khassias are probably the most expert in extracting iron from its ores and manufacturing it when made; and their mode of doing this is so original, and, though rude, so effective, that there can be no doubt that it is the result of long experience among themselves. They have, in fact, practised the art from time immemorial; yet though possessing iron tools for, it may be, thousands of years, they at the present day adhere to the practice of using rude unhewn-stone monuments, like the Jews, in preference to those "which any iron tool had touched at ​any time." Nor can it be argued that they do this because they do not know better. As just mentioned, at any time, certainly within the last thousand years, they might have seen the Buddhist or Hindu stonemasons of Kamarupa erecting the most elaborately carved stone temples, and can now see the domes of the mosques which the Mahommedans erected in the cities of Sylhet three or four centuries ago.
217. Sculpture on under side of Cap-stone of a Nilgiri Dolmen.
Although it thus happens that all these à priori reasonings and mistaken analogies, drawn from our own progressive state, which are so familiar to European antiquaries, break down at once when applied to India, still there are a few indications from which approximate dates may be obtained, and many more could, no doubt, be found if looked for. One of these is, that the greater number of the dolmens of the Nilgiri hills are sculptured; but only one of the drawings on them, so far as I know, has been published, and though it is ungracious to say so, I fear that it is not a very faithful representation. It is, however, sufficiently so to enable us to recognise at once a similarity to a class of monuments very common in the plains. These are called Viracull, if destined to commemorate men or heroes, and Masteecull if erected in honour of women who sacrifice themselves on their husband's funereal pile. Colonel Mackenzie collected drawings of more than one hundred of these, which are now in the India Office, and photographs of many others have been made but not published. ​The similarity in the costume and style of art displayed in the preceding woodcut with that of the memorial stones leaves little or no doubt of their being approximately of the same age. As most of the memorial stones are inscribed and their dates at least approximately known, if the identity can be established the date of the dolmens can also be determined. Till, however, some one will take the trouble of photographing the cairns, so as to enable us to compare them with the standing stones, no certainty can be obtained; but as none of the sculptured stones go back a thousand years, and those most like the woodcut cannot claim five centuries of antiquity, these sculptured cairns in the Nilgiris cannot be so very old as is sometimes assumed.
218. Dolmen at Iwullee. From a photograph.
The second instance is curious and instructive. In the centre of the courtyard of a now ruined Sivite temple at Iwullee, in Dharwar, in the very centre of the dolmen country, now stands a regular tripod dolmen of the usual shape (woodcut No. 218). The question is, how got it there? No one who knows anything of India will, I presume, argue that the Brahminical followers of Siva would erect the sanctuary of their god in front of the tomb of one of the despised aboriginal tribes, if still reverenced by them, or would ​have neglected to utilize it if neglected. One of two things therefore only seems possible. Either a Korumber, or native chief of some denomination, stipulated that on his conversion to the faith of the Brahmins, if he erected a temple in honour of his newly-adopted god, he should be allowed to be buried, "more majorum," in the courtyard. This is possible, but hardly probable. It seems more likely that, after the temple was desecrated and neglected, some native thought the spot fit and appropriate for his last resting-place, and was buried there accordingly. From its architecture, there is no doubt that the age of the temple may be carried back as far as the thirteenth century, but it more probably belongs to the fourteenth. According to the first hypothesis, the age of the dolmen would be that of the temple; according to the second, one, two, or three centuries more modern.
219. Stone Monuments at Shahpoor.
A third indirect piece of evidence is derived from Colonel Meadows Taylor's paper in the Irish Transactions. He represents a tolerably extensive group of these monuments as placed immediately outside the city gate at Shahpoor, and from what he says of them they are evidently of the same age as the other examples he quotes. From their position and arrangement, it does not seem doubtful that they are the usual extramural cemetery so generally attached to Indian cities, and they are, in fact, subsequent in date to the erection of the gate in front of which they are placed. The gateway, I learn from a letter from Colonel Meadows Taylor, undoubtedly belongs to the Mahommedan period. It is a regular arch, of the usual pointed form, and consequently subsequent to 1347 A.D., when the Bahmany dynasty first established themselves in this quarter. This being so, the masons who built the gate would certainly have utilized the tombs of the pagans had they existed previously. They must, therefore, be subsequent to ​the gate; and as it cannot be five centuries old, we have a limit to their age beyond which we cannot go.
220. Cross at Katapur. From a photograph.
Our next example is still more curious and interesting. In the cold weather of 1867-8, Mr. Mulheran, when attached to the Trigonometrical Survey of India, came accidentally across a great group of "cromlechs," situated on the banks of the Godavery, near Nirmul, about half-way between Hyderabad and Nagpore, in Central India. Some of these he photographed, and sent an account of them to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, from which the following particulars are gleaned. "The majority of the cromlechs consist of a number of upright stones, sunk in the ground in the form of a square, and covered with one or two large slabs of sandstone. In some two bodies appear to have been interred, and in others only one. The crosses are found in the neighbourhood of Malúr and Katapur, two villages on the Nizam's side of the river. The crosses at Katapur (woodcut No. 220) are, with one exception, uninjured. All are situated to the right of the cromlechs near which they have been erected. Judging from the one lying exposed at Malúr, they are all above 10 feet in length, although ​only 6 to 7 feet appear above ground. They all consist of one stone, and are all of the latest form. No information of any kind could be obtained regarding the people by whom the crosses or cromlechs were erected. There can be no doubt, however, that the crosses are memorials of the faith of Christians buried in their vicinity." Close by is a cave, before which a cross was erected, which Mr. Mulheran assumes was thrown down by the Brahmins when they took possession of it; and he adds, "I enclose a note from Captain Glasfurd, who sent a packet of implements, rings, and utensils, found in two of the cromlechs he opened, to the Asiatic Society." No such packet, however, ever arrived, and we are, therefore, left to his photographs and descriptions from which to draw our conclusions.
221. Dolmen at Katapur. From a photograph.
In the first place, I think it can hardly be doubted that the crosses are Christian emblems; and secondly, that the cromlechs and crosses are of the same date. Their juxtaposition and whole appearance render escape from this conclusion apparently inevitable. The question, therefore, is, when could any community of native Christians have existed in India who would bury in dolmens and use the cross as their emblems? Their distance from the coast and the form of the cross seem at once to cut ​them off from all connexion with St. Thomas's mission or that of the early apostles, even assuming that the records of these are authentic. My impression is that this form of cross was not introduced as an out-of-doors self-standing sign till, say, the sixth or seventh century. On the other hand, it is extremely improbable that any such community could have existed after the Mahommedan invasion at the end of the thirteenth century. Between these limits we know that the Nestorians had establishments as far
222. Dolmen with Cross in Nirmul Jungle.
east as China, and extending in a continuous chain westward as far at least as the Caspian; and there seems to be no difficulty ​in assuming that, between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries a form of Taiping Christianity may have been introduced from the north and established itself extensively in the western and central parts of India, but, owing allegiance only to the potentate we know of as Prester John, may have entirely escaped the knowledge of the Western world. Besides helping to fix the date of the dolmens in India, this discovery opens out a wide field for those who would investigate the early history of the Christian Church in India. There can be little doubt that this group is not solitary. Many more will be found, when people open their eyes and look for them. Meanwhile it is a curious illustration of the policy of Pope Gregory in his advice to Abbot Mellitus, alluded to in the Introduction (page 21). It is the same thing as the dolmen at Kerland (woodcut No. 131), and that at Arrichinaga (woodcut No. 161), repeated in the centre of India, though probably at a somewhat later date.
There is still another point of view from which these Indian monuments may be regarded, so as to throw considerable light on the history of their analogues in Europe, and perhaps to modify to some extent our preconceived views regarding their history. In Ceylon there is a class of dagoba, which, in some respects, is peculiar to the island. Two of these will suffice for our present purposes, both in the city of Anuradhapura, which was the capital of the country from about B.C. 400 till the eleventh century. The first of these, the Thupa Ramayana, was erected B.C. 161; the second, the Lanka Ramayana, A.D. 231. For the sake of the argument it would be best to select the first for illustration; but it was, unfortunately, so completely restored about forty years ago that, as in the case of our unfortunate cathedrals, it requires considerable knowledge of the style to discriminate between what is old and what new. Notwithstanding the four centuries that elapsed between their dates, however, they are so like one another in all essentials that it is of little consequence which we select. Neither is large, and both consist of nearly hemispherical domes, surmounted by a square box-like appendage ​called a Tee, and both are surrounded by three rows of tall stone pillars, as shown in the accompanying woodcut.
223. Lanka Ramayanu Dagoba, A.D. 231. From a photograph.
That the domical part of the dagoba is the lineal and direct descendant of the sepulchral tumuli or cairns, which are found everywhere in Northern Asia and probably existed in India in primæval times, is hardly open to doubt. This the Buddhists early refined into a relic shrine, probably immediately after the death of the founder of the religion, B.C. 543; and we know from numerous excavations that the relic was placed in a cist in the centre of the mound, nearly on the level of the soil, exactly where, and in the same manner as, the body-containing kistvaens of our sepulchral tumuli. To this, however, the Buddhists added a square box on the top, which either was invented by them or copied from some earlier form; but no dagoba was complete without it, and all the rock-cut examples and sculptured representations of topes, with many structural ones, still possess it. That it represented a wooden relic-casket may be assumed as certain, but whether it was ever used as such is not quite clear. The ​relics were sometimes accessible, and shown to the public on festal occasions and unless they were contained in some external case like this it is not easy to see how they could be got at. A third indispensable part of a perfect dagoba was an enclosing rail. All the early dagobas and all the sculptured representations possess this adjunct. In the rock-cut examples and in the later structural ones the rail becomes attached to the building as a mere ornament, but is never omitted.
224. Dolmen at Pullicondah.
If we compare such a sepulchral mound as this at Pullicondah, near Madras, or that represented in section, woodcut No. 211, with the Lanka or Thupa Ramayana dagobas, we cannot fail to be struck with their similarity. Both possess the mound, the rail, and the tee; and in this last instance it is a simulated tomb, such as many in Europe are suspected of having been. That a people might both bury in barrows and erect domical cairns to contain relics would not necessarily involve a proof of the one form being copied from the other; but that both should be surmounted by a simulated sarcophagus or shrine, and both surrounded by one, two, or three rows of useless stones, points to a direct imitation of the one from the other which can hardly be accidental.
​Assuming for the nonce that the one is copied from the other, the ordinary mode of reasoning with which we are familiar in Europe would be then something- like this. If the Thupa Ramayana were erected B.C. 161, this cairn at Pullicondah must probably be as old as B.C. 1000, for it would take many centuries before so rude a style of architecture could be reformed into so polished an example as the Thupa Ramayana, which, as before stated, we may assume as identical with the Lanka Ramayana (woodcut No. 223).
225. Rail at Sanchi, near Bhilsa.
The conclusions I have arrived at are diametrically opposed to this view. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, the architectural material of India was wood, down to B.C. 250 or 300. It then became timidly lithic, but retained all its wooden forms and simulated carpentry fastenings down, at all events, to the Christian era. The rail at Sanchi, which was erected in the course of the two centuries preceding our era, is still essentially wooden in all its parts, so much so that it is difficult to see how it could be constructed in stone, and these pillars round the Ceylonese dagobas are copies of wooden posts, and not such forms as in any number of centuries would have grown out of rude-stone forms. Had they been derived from the latter original they would have been thick, strong and massive, and never have assumed forms so curiously attenuated as we find here. It is difficult to see what these stone pillars or posts were originally intended for. It may have been either that garlands might be hung upon them on festal occasions, as we see represented in the sculptures, or that pictures might be suspended from them, as Fa Hian, who visited this place in the year 400, tells us was done all the way from Anuradhapura to Mehentele on the ​occasion of a great procession in honour of the Tooth relic which was there exposed to public view.
Be all this as it may, the question which this comparison raises is simply this: If we admit the similarity between the Pullicondah cairn and the Lanka Ramayana Tope, and that the one grew out of the other, it seems to me perfectly evident that the adjunct of the Tope grew out of a wooden and not out of a rude-stone original. If this is so, and if the Tope did not grow out of the cairn, the conclusion seems to me inevitable that the cairn is only a rude copy of a polished original.
The same conclusion hinted at above was forced on me by the examination of the rude-stone circles which crowd round the elaborate tope at Amravati. Generally, I know of no hypothesis by which the phenomenon of polished-stone buildings, with known dates, existing in India for the last 2000 years side by side with rude-stone monuments which are being erected at this day, can be accounted for, unless we give up our favourite system of sequence and are content to take facts as we find them.
It is quite certain there were no hewn-stone buildings in India before the year 250 B.C., and my impression is that none of the rude-stone monuments now existing there were erected till five, it may be ten centuries from that time, and when they once began that there is no break in the sequence to the present day.
I know nothing that can be fairly urged against this reasoning, except our own ignorance, and that of the natives themselves, with regard to the origin and date of these monuments. Neither is much to be wondered at, as it is only so lately that Europeans have turned their attention to the subject, and the natives know so little about their own monuments that it would be strange indeed if they knew anything at all about those of the hated and despised Dasyus. Any one who has travelled in India knows what sort of information he gets even from the best and most intelligent Brahmins with regard to the dates of the temples they and their forefathers have administered in ever since their erection. One thousand or two or three thousand years is a ​moderate age for temples which we know were certainly erected within the last two or three centuries. Or ask any native about the date of the rock-cut temples at Ellora or Elephanta, he at once glibly answers, they were erected by the Pandus, 3101 B.C.; and if he breaks loose from that landmark, ten or twenty thousand years is the least you can expect. Yet we know now, from inscriptions and other data, that no rock-cut temple can be carried further back than the second century B.C.
In this infantile state of the native mind it costs them nothing to hide their ignorance in the mists of thousands of years when questioned about these rude stones, but their testimony is absolutely worthless, and it is only by processes like those just described that we can hope to arrive at the truth. Among races so unchangeable as some of those existing in India they may carry us back to a time prior to the Christian era with some classes of monuments; but, unless I am very much mistaken, it will be found that all those mentioned in the preceding pages are of comparatively recent date and are members of an unbroken series which continues to the present day.
Comparison of Eastern with Western Dolmens.
We are now in a position to approach one of the most interesting, but at the same time most difficult, branches of the inquiry we are engaged upon, which is the connexion, if any, that exists between these Indian rude-stone monuments and those we find in Europe. The difficulties, however, do not appear to be so much inherent in the essence of the subject as in its novelty. It has never fairly been approached by any modern writer, and would consequently require an amount of illustration incompatible with such a work as this to make it clear, or, on the other hand, it is necessary to assume an amount of information on the part of the public which it is feared hardly anywhere exists.
The architectural evidence, as detailed in the preceding pages, seems of a nature difficult to resist. It is easy and generally correct to assume that men in certain stages of civilization will do the same thing or things, in a manner so similar that it ​is difficult to discriminate between them. There would thus be no improbability in assuming that all men would raise a mound of earth over the dead bodies of their buried ancestors, or that they would protect their bodies from being crushed by the super-incumbent weight, by a cist or coffin more or less artificially formed of stone or wood. It may even further be granted that when having got so far they would naturally improve and enlarge this cist into a dolmen or chamber and provide it with an external entrance. All these things being found together would by no means prove a necessary connexion between two races using them, further than that the races using or inventing these forms must have belonged to the same family of tomb-building ancestral-worshipping people. But when we find two distinct people putting this cist outside, on the tumulus in the open air, and piercing one of the slabs in it with a circular hole 6 or 8 inches in diameter, we come to a coincidence that can hardly be considered accidental. As there was no writing and no post, either some tribe must have migrated from the east to the west and introduced the form, or vice versâ, some European must have taught the Indians the advantages of this hole, whatever they were; and having been once taught to adopt, they afterwards continued to employ it.
A still more striking instance is that already pointed out, of the combination of a central cistvaen containing a body inside a mound with a simulated cist on the top outside, and several circles of stones on or around the mound externally. All this is so complicated and shows so much design that it cannot possibly be the result of accident, if it is found in two distinct lands. The examples quoted above are perhaps sufficient to establish this similarity, but they are only a fraction of those which might be adduced if the subject were carefully followed out. It evidently was much more common in the East than we have hitherto had reason to suspect—for this reason alone, if for no other—that it continued to last so long. In this example from Burmah (woodcut No. 226) we have first an external mound encircling the tope, then the circles of rude stones replaced by a complicated rail, and above all, in the centre, a simulated dagoba replacing the simulated cist. These are great changes, it must be confessed, but ​hardly so great as we might expect when we consider that the Senbya dagoba was only erected fifty-five years ago, and that the interval between it and the rude-stone monuments is consequently considerable. Another striking instance of the modern form this primæval sepulchre assumes is found in the celebrated tomb of Akbar the Great at Agra. There the king is buried in a vault below the level of the ground, but his simulated tomb is on the top of the pyramid, exposed to the air outside; and on each stage, externally, little pavilions replace the stones which his progenitors had previously employed for a like purpose.
These two—the holed stone and the simulated cist—are perhaps the most direct evidences of similarity between the East and the West, but the whole system affords innumerable points of contact, not sufficiently distinct perhaps to quote as evidence individually, but collectively making up such a case that it seems very difficult to refuse to believe that both styles were the product of one kindred race of men, and who at the time they erected them must have been more or less directly in communication with one another.
The literary evidence is much less complete or satisfactory. So far as I know, no paragraph has been detected in any classical authors which would lead us to suspect any connexion at any time between India and any country so remote from it, as France for instance, and still less with Denmark, unless it be the Woden myth belonging to the latter country. That, however, was either so indistinct originally, or has been so obscured by later additions, that it is now almost impossible to say what it is. Though so frequently insisted upon, it seems almost impossible that by any process, the gentle ascetic Sakya Muni could ever have become the fierce warlike Woden, and except some nominal similarities there seems nothing to connect the two. It may be that at some time about the Christian era, a chief of that name migrated from the Crimean Bosphorus to the Baltic, and may have brought with him some Asiatic practices, but the connecting link between him and India seems wholly wanting, and not likely to be now supplied.
226. View of the Senbya Pagoda, Burmah. From a photograph.
The great interest, however, for our present purpose is that an Indian emperor, in the middle of the third century before Christ, should be in a condition to form an alliance with Magas of Cyrene so near the African dolmen-field. As before mentioned (ante, p. 410), we are still very deficient in our knowledge of the Megalithic remains of this country; but we do know that they exist, and that those which have been illustrated are of a singularly Indian type. It is also nearly certain that many of the rock-cut chambers about his capital are monasteries or temples, not tombs, as has always been too hastily assumed. Whether, on further investigation, these will prove to be so essentially Indian as they at present appear to be, remains to be seen, but meanwhile the ​possibility of an alliance of this sort two or three centuries before Christ, takes away much of the improbability that would otherwise exist in assuming- that Indian influence might have extended further westward at some subsequent period, and that the African dolmens might be proved to be allied to, and possibly contemporary with, those of India.
Buddhism in the West.
The great basis, however, on which any proof of the existence of a connexion between the East and West must eventually rest, will probably be found in the amount of pure Buddhism which crept into Christianity in the early age of the Church. The subject has not yet been fairly grappled with by any one capable of doing it justice. It has been frequently alluded to by travellers, who have been struck with resemblances which could hardly be accidental, and used sometimes by scoffers in order to depreciate Christianity; but no serious historian of the Latin Church has had sufficient knowledge of Buddhism or of its forms to be able to appreciate correctly either the extent or the cause of its introduction; and till some one does this, it will be treated by the general reader as an idle speculation. Yet it probably is not too much to assert, that at least nine-tenths of the institutions and forms which were engrafted on pure evangelical Christianity in the middle ages, are certainly derived from Buddhist sources.
Of these, one of the most striking is the introduction of monastic institutions, which exercised so important an influence on the forms of Christianity during the whole period of the middle ages. It is in vain to look for their origin in anything that existed in Europe before the Christian era. Nothing can be more forced than the analogies it has been attempted to establish between the Vestal virgins and the nuns of the middle ages, and no trace of conventual life can be found among the semi-secular priesthood of classical times. According to the usually received opinion, Antony (A.D. 305) was the first monk, and from him and about his time a prolific progeny are traced to the Thebais, which is usually assumed to be the cradle of the institution. Monastic life was, however, absolutely ​antithetical to the religious institutions of the ancient Egyptians, amongst whom the king was high priest and god, and where civil could hardly be distinguished from religious rank. It was equally opposed to the feelings of the Arabic or at least Semitic races, that superseded the Coptic in that country, and could consequently hardly have existed at all, unless introduced from some foreign source and maintained by some extraneous influence. The Essenes are the only sect to whom in the ancient world in the West anything like the peculiar institutions of monasticism can be traced; but unfortunately we do not know how or when they adopted them. Josephus represents them as only one of the three principal sects into which the Jews in his time were divided; but the silence not only of the Bible but of the Rabbis weakens the force of his statement, while his unfortunate omission of the name of their Lawgiver leaves us in the dark on the most essential point. That it was not Moses, whose name is usually interpolated, is quite certain. He never inculcated any such doctrines, and one hardly dares to suggest the Indian name, which would clear up the whole mystery at once. Be this as it may, the sect only arose apparently in the time of the Maccabees, and practically disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; all which would accord perfectly with the hypothesis of their Indian origin, but would hardly suffice to support the idea that they were the sect from whom, in the fourth century, the Christian Church adopted the principles and practices of Asceticism.
When from these sparse indications we turn to the East, we are met by the difficulty that none of the books we possess were reduced to writing in their present form till the time of Buddhaghosa, A.D. 412, or even later; and any one who knows what wild ​imaginings can in the fertile East creep into works during the remodellings of a thousand years, will easily understand with what caution they must be used. Fortunately in this instance the monuments and inscriptions come to our assistance, and we are enabled to form a fair idea of the progress of monasticism in India from what they tell us.
Before the first monuments, the books tell us of three great convocations: the first held immediately on the death of the founder of the religion, B.C. 543, at Rajagriha; the second 100 years afterwards, at Vaisali; and the third by Asoka, 250 B.C., at Pataliputta, or Patna. These we are told were attended by thousand and tens of thousands of monks. But Asoka's edicts give no countenance to any such extension of the system in his day. Shortly after this, however, the earlier caves show cells appropriated to hermits, or even for the reunion of a limited number of monks under one roof. These Viharas or monasteries are small at first, and insignificant as compared with the Chaityas or church caves to which they are attached, as at Karlee, Baja, Bedsa and elsewhere; but shortly afterwards, at Nassick and Jooneer, in the first or second centuries they become more important; and when we reach such a series as that at Ajunta or Baug, for instance, we find the Vihara becoming all important, the Chaitya sinking into comparative insignificance. This great change took place apparently about the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century of our era, and continued till Buddhism actually perished, smothered under the weight of its enormously developed hierarchy some three centuries later.
The sculptures tell the same story. There are no representations of priests in the form we afterwards find them in at Sanchi, in the first century of our era. Ascetics there are, dwelling in woods and lonely places, but not congregated in monasteries, nor jointly performing ceremonies. But at Amravati, three centuries later, we have shaven priests in their distinctive robes, and every symptom of a well developed system.
If this is so, it could hardly have been before the era of the Roman Empire that these peculiar institutions penetrated to the West; nor could they have done so during its supremacy without ​attracting attention. But in the great "débacle" which followed the change of the seat of government and the destruction of the old faith, it is easy to see how these forms may have crept in, together with the new Eastern faith, which an illiterate people were adopting, without much knowing whence it came, and without being able to discriminate what was Christian and what Buddhist in the forms or doctrines that were being presented to them.
Among the peculiarities then introduced, one of the most remarkable was the segregation of the clergy from the laity, and the devotion of the former wholly to the performance of religious duties. Still more so was their seclusion in monasteries, living a life of the most self-denying asceticism, subsisting almost wholly on alms, and bound by vows of poverty, chastity and temperance, to a negation of all the ordinary enjoyments of life. That the two systems are identical no one has doubted, and no one, indeed, can enter now a Buddhist monastery in the East and watch the shaven priests in the yellow robes at matins, or at vespers, issue from their cells and range themselves on either side of a choir, on whose altar stands an image of the Queen of Heaven, or of the three precious Buddhas, and listen to their litanies, chanted in what to them is a dead or foreign tongue, without feeling that he is looking in the East on what is externally the same as he had long been familiar with in the West. If he follows these monks back to their cells and finds them governed by a mitred abbot, and subordinated as deacons, priests, and neophytes, learns that they are bound by vows of celibacy, live by alms, and spend their lives in a dull routine of contemplation and formal worship, he might almost fancy he was transported back into some Burgundian convent in the middle ages, unless he is prepared, like Huc and Gabet, to believe that it is a phantasm conjured up by the author of all evil for the confusion ​of mankind. We know from the form and arrangement of the great Chaitya caves, that these forms prevailed as early at least as the first century B.C., and, as they are practised without change in the East to the present day, it seems clear that it is thence that they were introduced into Europe.
Canonization is another remarkable institution common to the Buddhist and Christian Churches, and to them only. It has frequently been attempted to draw a parallel between the demigods of Greece and Rome and the institution of Saints in the mediæval Church; but this argument has always failed, because in fact no two institutions could in their origin be more essentially different. The minor gods of the heathen pantheon, though sometimes remarkable for their prowess or virtues, were all more or less connected by ties of blood or marriage with the great Olympic family, and owed their rank rather to their descent than to their merits. It is true that in later times the deification of Roman emperors and others of that class, which the abject flattery of a corrupt age had introduced, was a nearer approach to the practice of Buddhism, which was then flourishing in the East, than anything before known in the pagan world. But canonization in its purity, as practised both in the East and West, is not to be attained through either birth or office, but by the practice of ascetic virtues on the part of the clergy, and by piety coupled with benefactions to the Church by those outside its pale. In these casteless institutions any man, however obscure his origin, by devotion to the interests of his adopted order, and the practice of the asceticism, heightened if possible by the endurance of self-inflicted tortures, might attain to Buddhahood or saintship. But such a path to adoration in this world, or to worship hereafter, was utterly unknown in Europe until it was introduced from the East, after the Christian era.
Relic-worship is another peculiarity which the mediæval Church certainly borrowed from the East. No tradition is more constant than that which relates that the relics of Buddha were, after cremation, divided into eight parts, and distributed to eight different kingdoms, and the history of some portions of these can be traced to comparatively modern times. Perhaps too much reliance should not be placed on these very early traditions, as ​no material evidence of them exists, nor in the often-repeated assertion that Asoka built 84,000 dagobas, to receive relics. That he built several is quite certain. The fact of the relics of two of the favourite disciples of Buddha—Mogalana and Sariputra—and of ten of the principal dignitaries of the Buddhist Church in the time of Asoka having been found at Sanchi in topes certainly anterior to the Christian era, is quite sufficient for our present purpose. As is well known, the Tooth relic, whose history can be traced back with certainty for more than fifteen centuries, is now worshipped under British protection in Ceylon.
No such form of worship existed in classical antiquity, nor is it quite clear how it came to be adopted by the Christian Church. Buddhism was a reform of a material, ancestral-worshipping, body-respecting form of religion. The sepulchral tumulus with them became in consequence a dagoba, or relic shrine, containing a bone, or a vessel, or rag, or something that belonged to Buddha or some of his followers; and all the grosser superstitions of the Turanian natives, whose faith he was trying to elevate and refine, were sublimated into something immaterial and more pure. But Christianity never could have wanted this, and its adoption of relic worship was either a piece of blind imitation adopted without thinking, among other things, for which there was more excuse, or it was one of the many instances of the toleration of foreign elements which characterized the Christian priesthood in the early age of the Church.
It is as little clear when this worship was introduced as why it was done, for Christian legends in regard to relics are not more to be depended upon than those of the Buddhists. It could not have been common in the days of Clemens of Alexandria, or he would not have mentioned as a wonder that the Indians worshipped a bone enclosed in a pyramid; but shortly after Constantine's time the fashion became prevalent, and the miracles performed by the touch of relics became one of the favourite delusions of the middle ages. If this is correct, and we are justified in assuming ​that the Buddhism which we find in mediæval Christianity was introduced after Constantine's time, we may take it for granted that any influence which the East exercised on the Western rude-stone monuments was also subsequent to that monarch's reign. If this is so, a considerable portion, at least, of those found in both countries must also belong to the dark ages that closed with the Crusades.
It would be easy to go on multiplying instances of Eastern customs introduced into the Western Church were this the place to do it. All that is required here, however, is to adduce sufficient evidence to accentuate an assertion which no one, probably, who knows anything of the subject would be found to dispute. It is, that the mediæval Church borrowed many of its forms from pre-existing Buddhism, and that these were introduced not before but after the time of Constantine. If, after having reached conviction on this point, we turn to our books to ascertain what light they throw on the subject, we find them absolutely silent. You may wade through all the writings of the Fathers, all the ponderous tomes of the Bollandists, without finding a trace, or even a hinted suspicion, that such a transference of doctrine took place. Except from one or two passages in Clemens of Alexandria, we should not be able to show that before the time of Constantine the nations of the West knew even the name of Buddha, much less anything of his doctrines. While this is so it is obviously idle to ask for written evidence with regard to the influence of either country on the architectural style of the other. Men write volumes on volumes with regard to doctrines and faiths, but rarely allude to anything that concerns mere buildings; and while written history is so absolutely silent respecting the introduction of Buddhist forms into the West, it is in vain to hope that any allusion will be found to the influence Eastern forms may have had on the sepulchral monuments of Northern Africa or Europe. In this case, the "litera scripta" is not to be depended upon, but the monuments and their inscriptions are, and it is from them and them only, that either correct dates or reliable materials for such an investigation can be obtained. So far as I am capable of ​forming an opinion, their evidence is amply sufficient, in the first place, to take away all à priori improbability from the assumption that there may have been a direct influence exercised by the East on the Western rude-stone monuments. But it seems to me at the same time sufficient to render it extremely probable that while influencing to so great an extent the religious institutions of the country, they should also have modified their sepulchral forms so as fully to account for all the similarities which we find existing between them.
It may not be possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to explain exactly how this influence was exercised, and we must, consequently, rest content with the fact that as Buddhism did so influence the religion of the West in those early ages, the same agency may equally have acted upon the architectural or sepulchral forms of the same class in our population.
To explain this it is necessary to revert for a moment to a proposition I have often had occasion to advance, and have not yet seen refuted—that Buddhism is the religion of a Turanian race, using that word, as used by its inventors, in the broadest possible sense. The Persians say Iran and Turan, and Iran and Aniran, terms equivalent to our Aryan and non-Aryan; and Buddhism is not and never was, but exceptionally, the religion of the Aryan race, and is not now professed by any Aryan people in any quarter of the globe. It is essentially the faith of a quiescent, contemplative race, with no distinct idea of a god external to this world, or of a future state other than through transmigrations accomplished in this world, leading only to eternal repose hereafter; its followers, however, still believing in the direct influence of the temporarily-released spirits of their forefathers in guiding and controlling the destiny of their offspring, thus leading directly to ancestral worship. In India this primitive faith was refined and elevated into one of the most remarkable and beneficent of human institutions by the Aryan Sakya Muni and his Brahmin coadjutors, and did at one time nearly obliterate the Aryan faith which it superseded. After, however, a thousand years of apparent supremacy, the old faith came again to the surface and Buddhism disappeared from India, but still remains the only faith of all the ​Turanian nations around it and wherever the Aryan races never seem to have settled.
If any Turanian blood remained in the veins of any of the various races who inhabited Europe in the middle ages, it is easy to understand how the preaching or doctrines of any Buddhist missionaries or Turanian tribes must have struck a responsive chord in their hearts, and how easily they would have adopted any new fashion these Easterns may have taught. As we have had occasion to point out above, the dolmen-builders of Europe certainly were not Aryan. Nor, if we may trust M. Bertrand and the best French antiquaries, were they Celts; but that an old pre-Celtic people did exist in those parts of France in which the dolmens are generally found appears to me indisputable. Though the more active and progressive Celts had commenced their obliteration of this undemonstrative people at the time when written history first began in their country, there is no reason to suppose that their blood or their race was entirely exterminated till a very recent period, and it may still have been numerically the prevalent ingredient in the population between the fourth and the tenth centuries of our era.
Of course, it is not intended to assert or even to suggest that the Western nations first adopted from the East the practice of using stone to accentuate and adorn their sepulchral monuments. The whole evidence of the preceding pages contradicts such an assumption. But what they do seem to have borrowed is the use or abuse of holed stones, and the arrangement of external dolmens on the summit of tumuli combined with two or three circles of rude stones. These I fancy to have been among the latest of the forms which rude-stone architecture adopted, and may very well have been introduced in post-Constantinian times; and when we become more familiar with the peculiarities of these monuments, both in the East and the West, there may be other forms which we may recognize as modern and interchangeable, while many others, such as the great chambered tumuli and the tall solitary menhirs, seem as original and as peculiar to the West.
Having now made the tour of the Old World, it will be ​convenient to try to resume, in as few words as possible, the principal results we have arrived at from the preceding investigation.
First, with regard to their age. It seems that the uncivilized, ancestral-worshipping races of Europe first borrowed from the Romans — or, if any one likes, from the Phœnicians or Greeks of Marseilles — the idea of using stone to accentuate and adorn the monuments of their dead. In like manner, it certainly was from the Bactrian Greeks that the Indians first learned the use of stone as a building material. How early the Eastern nations adopted it in its rude form we do not know. In its polished form it was used as early as the middle of the third century B.C., but we have no authentic instance of the rude form till at least a century or two after Christ; but, once introduced, its use continued to the present day. Its history in the West seems somewhat different. The great chambered tumuli at Gavr Innis, and others in France, as well as those at Lough Crew, in Ireland, seem to belong to a time before the Romans occupied the states of Western Europe; but no stone monument of this class has yet made out its claim to an antiquity of more than two centuries, if so much, before the Christian era. Some of those in Greece about Mycenæ, and those at Saturnia, may be earlier, but they are as yet undescribed scientifically, and we cannot tell. From shortly before the Christian era, till the countries in which they are found became entirely and essentially Christian, the use of these monuments seems to have been continual, whenever a dolmen-building race — or, in other words, a race with any taint of Turanian blood in their veins — continued to prevail. This, in remote corners of the world, seems to have extended in France and Britain down to the eighth or ninth century. In Scandinavia it lasted down to the eleventh or twelfth, and sporadically, in out-of-the-way and neglected districts, as late both in France and Great Britain.
These results do not, of course, touch the age of the earthen tumuli or barrows, for the determination of whose age no scale has yet been invented; still less do they approach the question of the antiquity of the Cave men or the palæolithic stone implements, ​the age of which we must, for the present at least, leave wrapped in the mists of the long prehistoric past.
Their uses seem more easily determined than their dates; with only a few rare and easily-recognizable exceptions, all seem originally to have been intended for sepulchral or cenotaphic purposes. Either, like the great chambered tumuli and the dolmens, they were actually the burying-places of the illustrious dead; or, like the greater circles and the alignments, they marked battle-fields, and were erected in honour of those slain there, whether their bodies were actually laid within their precincts or not; or, like the rude stone pillars of the Khassia hills, they were offerings to the spirits of the departed.
With the fewest possible exceptions and these of the most insignificant character, their connexion with the relics of the dead can be proved from all having become places for ancestral worship and having under various forms been used for commemorating or honouring departed spirits. No single instance has been authenticated of either circles or dolmens in any other form, except perhaps single stones, having ever been used for the worship of Odin, or of the gods called Mercury, Mars, Venus, or the other gods of the Druids, still less is there any trace of the worship of the sun or moon or any of the heavenly host; nor, I am sorry to think, can the serpent lay claim to any temple of this class. Honour to the dead and propitiation of the spirits of the departed seem to have been the two leading ideas that both in the East and West gave rise to the erection of these hitherto mysterious structures which are found numerously scattered over the face of the Old World.
* ↑ 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p. 459, fig. 968.
* ↑ 'Caves of Baja and Bedsa in Western Ghâts;' unpublished.
* ↑ 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' quotation from Hiouen Thsang, p. 135, and plates, passim.
* ↑ 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p. 649.
* ↑ 'Architecture of Ahmedabad.' 120 photographs, with text. Murray, 1868.
* ↑ Yule, 'Mission to the Court of Ava,' p. 43, pl. ix.
* ↑ 'J. A. S. B.' vii. p. 930.
* ↑ 'J. R. A. S.,' new series, iv. p. 88.
* ↑ 'Tods Rajastan,' i. p. 224.
* ↑ The information regarding the Khonds is principally derived from a work entitled 'Memorials of Service,' by Major Charteris-Macpherson (Murray, 1865), and his papers in 'J. R. A. S.' xiii. pp. 216 et seqq. I quote by preference from the latter, as the more generally accessible.
* ↑ For several years past I have officially and privately been exerting all the influence I possess to try and get two bassi relievi that exist in these caves cast or photographed, or at least carefully copied in some form, but hitherto in vain. In 1809 the Government sent an expedition to Cuttack with draftsmen, photographers, &c., but they knew so little what was wanted that they wasted their time and money in casting minarets and sculptures of no beauty or interest, and, having earned their pay, returned re infecta. I am not without hopes that something may be done during the present cold season. When representations are obtained, they will throw more light on the history of the Yavanas or Greeks in that remote part of India than anything else that could be done, and would clear up some points in the history of Indian art that are now very obscure.
* ↑ Sterling's account of Cuttack, 'Asiatic Researches,' xv. p. 306.
* ↑ Loc. s. c. p. 315.
* ↑ Tacitus' 'Germania,' 9.
* ↑ H. Walters, 1828, 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. pp. 499 et seqq. Colonel Yule, 'Proceedings, Soc. of Antiq. Scot.' i. p. 92. Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 276. Major Godwin Austen, 'Journal Anthropological Institute,' vol. i. Part II.
* ↑ Schlagintweit, in 'Ausland,' No. 23, 1870, pp. 530 et seqq.
* ↑ 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. p. 502.
* ↑ Major Godwin Austin, 'Journal Anthrop. Institute,' i. p. 127.
* ↑ 'Journal Anthrop. Inst.' i. p. 126.
* ↑ 'Mémoires sur les Contrées occidentales,' iii. p. 76.
* ↑ Colonel Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,' vol. ii. pls. lviii. lix. lx. They have also been described by Dr. Stevenson, 'J. R. A. S.' v. pp. 192 et seqq. It would be extremely interesting, in an ethnographic point of view, if some further information could be obtained regarding these stone rows.
* ↑ 'Early Races of Scotland.' ii. 459.
* ↑ 'J. R. A. S' xiii. p. 268.
* ↑ I quote from a paper by him, published in the 'Trans. R. Irish Academy,' xxiv. pp. 329 et seqq. There is an earlier paper by him in the 'J. B. B. R. A. S.' vol. iii. 179, but it is superseded by the later publication.
* ↑ 'Proceedings, Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1868,' p. 152.
* ↑ 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 200.
* ↑ 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 245.
* ↑ 'J. R. A. S.' new series, iii. p. 143.
* ↑ 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 257.
* ↑ Published on a reduced scale, 'Tree and serpent Worship,' p. xlvi.
* ↑ The principal sources of information on the subject are the papers of Sir Walter Elliot and Col. Meadows Taylor, so often referred to above. But I am also indebted to Mr. M. J. Walhouse, M.C.S., for a great amount of valuable information on the subject. His private letters to me are replete with details which if he would only consent to arrange and publish would throw a flood of light on the subject.
* ↑ Norwich volume, 'International Prehistoric Congress,' pp. 252 et seqq. He places the destruction of the Karumbers as early as the seventh century, but the dates are, to say the least, often very doubtful. When, for instance, Hiouen Thsang visited Conjeveran in 640—the Buddhist establishment—they were still flourishing, and no signs apparent of the storm, which did not, I fancy, break out till at least a century after that time. See also 'The Seven Pagodas,' by Capt. Carr, Madras, 1869, p. 127.
* ↑ Second Report by the Rev. W. Taylor, 'Madras Lit. Jour.' vii. p. 311 et passim.
* ↑ Caldwell's 'Dravidian Grammar,' pp. 9 et seqq. 'The Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills,' by a German missionary (Madras, 1856) — the Rev. F. Metz, who probably knows more of their language than any one now living. Mr. Walhouse's letters are also strong on this point.
* ↑ See 'Rock-cut Temples,' by the Author, p. 50.
* ↑ Sir Walter Elliot, 'J. R. A. S.' iv. pp. 7 et seqq.; and new series, i. 250.
* ↑ Sir W. Elliot, 'Journal Ethnological Soc.,' new series, 1869, p. 110.
* ↑ Lieut. Cole, R.E., has brought home a cast of the upper part of this pillar, which is now at the South Kensington Museum.
* ↑ 'Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' vii. p. 629.
* ↑ The crack and bend in the upper part of the pillar are caused by a cannon shot, the dent of which is distinctly visible on the opposite side. I hope it was not fired by the English, but I do not know who else would, or could, have done it.
* ↑ Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 310. Percy's 'Metallurgy: Iron and Steel,' p. 254 et seqq. All the original authorities will be found referred to in the last-named work.
* ↑ Josephus, 'Bell. Jud.,' v. p. 6.
* ↑ 'Journal Madras Lit. Soc.' xiv. pl. 8.
* ↑ 'J. A. S. B.' xxxvii. p. 116 et seqq.
* ↑ An elaborate paper by the Rev. Mr. Joyce, in the 'Archæological Journal,' 108, 1870, shows, I think clearly, that these crosses could not be earlier than 470 A.D. — all the crosses he quotes being of the usual Greek form, though possessing one longer limb. Indeed, I do not myself know of any crosses like those at Nirmul earlier than the 10th or 11th century; but, as my knowledge of the subject is not profound, I have allowed the widest possible margin in the text. I cannot prove it, but my impression is, that they belong to the 11th or 12th century.
* ↑ As it is wholly beside the object of this work I have not attempted to go into the history of the Siganfu Tables, nor the records of the early churches in the East. If the reader cares to know more, he will find the subject fully and clearly discussed in Col. Yule's 'Cathay, and the Way Thither,' published by the Hakluyt Society, 1866. It is the last work on the subject, and contains references to all the earlier ones.
* ↑ 'J. R. A. S.,' xiii. 164 et seq.
* ↑ Wilson's 'Ariana Antiqua,' Introduction passim. Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' &c., passim.
* ↑ Hiouen Thsang, 'Vie et Voyages,' p. 77.
* ↑ 'Madras Journal of Lit. and Science,' xiii. pl. 14.
* ↑ 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' p. 82, woodcut 8.
* ↑ 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 335.
* ↑ 'J. R. A. S.' xii. p. 233. 'J. B. A. S.' vii. p. 261 et seqq.
* ↑ Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall,' iv. p. 392, where the original authorities are found.
* ↑ Josephus, 'B. J.,' II. viii. p. 9.
* ↑ "The prestige of such a witness as Buddhaghosa soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and councils 800 years before his time are, in truth, worth no more than the stories told of Arthur, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome"—Chips from a German Workshop, i. p. 198. As a mere linguist, and dependent wholly on books, Max Müller was perfectly justified in making this statement, while his ignorance of everything connected with the archæology or art of India, prevented his perceiving how these wild statements could be verified or controlled. Till he learns that there are other means of investigation than mere words his statements on these subjects are untrustworthy, and, in many cases, absolutely worthless.
* ↑ Turnour's 'Mahawanso,' 12 et seqq. 'J. A. S. B.,' vii. passim.
* ↑ Huc and Gabet, in their 'Travels in Thibet,' give a most amusing account of their bewilderment on observing there these things:—"La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique, la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou lorsqu'ils font quelque cerémonie hors du temple; l'office des deux chœurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinque chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer à volonté; les benédictions données par les Lamas, en étendant la main droite sur la tête des fidèles; le chapelet, le célibat ecclesiastique, les retraites spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeunes, les processions, les litanies, l'eau bénite: voilà autant des rapports que les Bouddhistes ont avec nous."—Vol. ii. p. 110.
* ↑ 'Mahavanso,' p. 26.
* ↑ Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' p. 289 et seqq.
* ↑ Clemens, i. 194. Oxford, 1715.
* ↑ Clemens, i. 132. Translation by Potter, ut sup. p. 504.
* ↑ The accidental resemblance of the microlithic temples of the Deccan mentioned above (p. 467) can hardly be quoted as an exception. They are said to be dedicated to Vetal, but it is not clear that the stones of the circle do not represent dead, as they certainly do absent persons, and the sacrifice, after all, is offered up to their departed spirits; it being a form of the present day we do not know how much its spirit may not be changed from the ancient rite which it was originally intended to typify.