Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses

by James Fergusson

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."[550] 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 Sylhet. 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.