198. Circle near Peshawur. From a photograph.
We tread on surer ground when we reach the Caubul valley, not that many proofs of it have yet been published, but the quantity of tumuli, topes, and similar monuments,[527] render it certain that circles and dolmens will be found there when looked for. Only one typical example has been published, but Sir Arthur Phayre, to whom we owe it, heard of other similar monuments existing in the neighbourhood. Fourteen of the stones composing this circle are still standing, and the tallest are about 11 feet in height, but others are lying on the ground more or less broken. The circle is about 50 feet in diameter, and there are appearances of an outer circle of smaller stones at a distance of about 50 to 60 feet from the inner one. The natives have no tradition about its erection, except the same myth which we find in Somersetshire, that a wedding party, passing over the plain, were turned into stone by some powerful magician. [528]
199. Circle at Deb Ayeh, near Darabgerd.
At present, these Eusufzaie circles, and those described by Sir William Ouseley at Deli Ayeh,[529] are almost the only examples we have to bridge over the immense gulf that exists between the Eastern and Western dolmen regions. Even the last, however, is only a frail prop for a theory, inasmuch as we have only a drawing of it by Sir W. Ouseley, who, in his description, says: "I can scarcely think the arrangement of these stones wholly, though it may be partly, natural or accidental." Coupled with the stone represented as figure 13 on the same plate, in Sir William Ouseley's work, I feel no doubt about these belonging to the class of rude-stone monuments, but we must know of more examples and more about them before we can reason with confidence regarding them. Another example, which certainly appears to be artificial, is recorded by Chardin. In travelling between Tabriz and Miana, he observed on his left hand several circles of hewn stones, which his companions informed him had been placed there by the Caous—the giants of the Kaianian dynasty. "The stones," he remarks, "are so large, that eight men could hardly move one of them, yet they must have been brought from quarries in the hills, the nearest of which is twenty miles distant."[530] Numerous travellers must have passed that way since, but no one has observed these stones. It does not, however, follow that they are not still there, and hundreds of others besides; but while all this uncertainty prevails, it is obviously most unsafe to speculate on the manner in which any connexion may have taken place. It may turn out that the intervening country is full of dolmens, or it may be that practically we know all that is to be learned on the subject, but till this is ascertained, any theory that may be broached must be open to correction, perhaps even to refutation. It is not, however, either useless or out of place to make such suggestions as those contained in the last few pages. They turn attention to subjects too liable to be overlooked, but which are capable of easy solution when fairly examined, while their truth or falsehood does not practically in any essential degree affect the main argument. The age and uses of the Indian dolmens, as of the European examples, must be determined from the internal evidence they themselves afford. Each must stand or fall from its own strength or weakness. It would of course be interesting if a connexion between the two can be established, and we could trace the mode and time when it took place, but it is not necessarily important. If anyone cares to insist that there was no connexion between the two, he deprives himself of one of the principal points of interest in the whole enquiry, but does not otherwise affect the argument either as to their age or use. But of all this we shall be in a better position to judge when we have gone through the evidence detailed in the next chapter.
Footnotes
[507] Genesis xxviii. 18; xxxv. 14.
[508] Josephus, 'Bell. Jud.' v. 6.
[509] Joshua iv. 2 to 8. There is some mistake in the 9th verse; either it is a mistranslation or the verse is an interpolation. It is to be hoped that the Revisers will look to it.
[510] Exodus iv. 25; Joshua v. 3.
[511] Herodotus (ii. 86) mentions that, in his day, the Egyptians, after extracting the brain with an iron instrument, cut open the body they intended to embalm with an Ethiopic stone, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson ('Ancient Egyptians,' iii. 262) found two flint knives in a tomb which might have been used for such a purpose.
[512] Irby and Mangles, 'Travels in Egypt, Nubia, &c.' 1823, p. 325.
[513] Colonel Meadows Taylor, in 'Trans. Royal Irish Academy,' 1865.
[514] Genesis, xiii. 18; xiv. 13.
[515] Gen. xiii. 5.
[516] 'Journal Royal Geographical Society,' 1868, pp. 243 et seq.
[517] S. Palgrave, 'Central and Eastern Arabia,' i. p. 251. These appear to be the same as those mentioned by Bonstetten. "Dernièrement encore un missionaire jésuite, le Père Kohen, a découvert en Arabie dans le district de Kasim, près de Khabb, trois vastes cercles de pierres pareils à celui de Stonehenge, et composés chacun de groupes de trilithes d'une grande élevation."—Essai sur les Dolmens, p. 27.
[518] One of them has already been given, woodcut No. 25, p. 100.
[520] Dubois de Montpereux, v. pp. 194 et seq. pls. xx. to xxv. See also 'Journal Arch. Ass.' xiii. pp. 303 et seq.
[521] Dubois de Montpereux, 'Voyage autour du Caucase,' i. p. 43. See also two dolmens from drawings by W. Simpson, in Waring's 'Stone Monuments,' pl. lx.
[522] Haxthausen, 'Mémoires sur la Russie,' ii. p. 291.
[523] 'Voyage,' i. p. 495.
[524] 'Purchas his Pilgrims,' iii. p. 8.
[525] These particulars are taken from a Russian work, 'Recueil d'Antiquités de la Scythie,' 1866. Only one number, apparently, was ever published.
[526] 'Mémoires sur la Russie,' ii. p. 308.
[527] Introduction to Wilson's 'Ariana Antiqua,' passim.
[528] 'Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' p. i. No. 1, 1870.
[529] 'Travels in Persia,' ii. p. 124, pl. lv. fig. 14.
[530] 'Voyages en Perse, &c.,' i. p. 267.