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 superincumbent 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.
226. View of the Senbya Pagoda, Burmah. From a photograph.
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.
The one passage that seems to bear directly on the subject, strange to say, comes this time from India itself. Among the edicts that Asoka engraved on the rocks in various parts of India, the last or thirteenth is to the following effect, so far as it can be made out. It is unfortunately the nearest to the ground, and consequently in all the published copies appears more or less injured. Two more copies of the edicts are known to exist,—one in the Dehra Doon, the other in Orissa: when they are copied and published, perhaps a more perfect translation may be possible. Meanwhile, Mr. Prinsep's translation runs thus:—"There is not in either class of the heretics of men a procedure marked by such grace ... nor so glorious nor friendly, nor even so extremely liberal, as Devanampiyo's (Asoka's) injunction for the non-injury and content of living creatures.... And the Greek king besides by whom the kings of Egypt, Ptolemaios, Antigonus and Magas.... Both here and in foreign countries wherever they go, the religious ordinances of Devanampiyo effect conversion. Conquest is of every description, but the conquest that bringeth joy, springing from pleasant emotion, becometh joy itself. The victory of virtue is happiness. Such victory is desired in things of this world and things of the next world."[583] In other copies of this edict the names of Antiochus and Alexander are found, making five well known names, and curiously enough all five are mentioned by Justin within a few lines of one another in the last chapter of his twenty-sixth book and the first chapter of his twenty-seventh book. There is thus no doubt who the kings were, nor of more than a year as to the date of this edict, which must have been within a year or so of 257 B.C.
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.