Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses

by James Fergusson

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[556] 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 flints. According to Sir Walter Elliot,[557] 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.[558] Monuments very similar to these exist in the Nilgiri hills, and elsewhere in India,[559] 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[560] 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.[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.