Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses

by James Fergusson

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.[561] 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.[562] From his own researches, and the various documents contained in the Mackenzie MSS.,[563] 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.[564] But, in such a case as this, language is a most unsafe guide. Within 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;[565] 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,[566] 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.