At an ordinary village the stones usually belong to one of the following classes:—
(a) Stones to mark off boundaries or places, such as the majvatvaikars, marking the path or spot used by the women in fetching buttermilk from the dairy.
(b) Stones used in the ceremonies in which offerings are made, the irnörtkars and the pilinörtkars.
(c) Funeral stones, at which the buffaloes are killed. These are, of course, only found at funeral villages, but there are certain other stones, such as the imudrikars, which may be found in any village. Such a stone may mark the spot where the body is laid, or may even, as in the case of the imudrikars of Kars, form a mound on which the body is laid.
(d) Stones in or near the tu or buffalo pen, such as the mutchudkars and pudothkars. I do not know the origin or use of these, but in some villages there are stones in the pen marking the places where the mu or dairy vessels are buried, and it is possible that the above stones are in some way connected with the buried dairy-vessels.
(e) The lifting stone or tukitthkars. This is usually a large round stone which sometimes resembles in appearance stones of a ceremonial character.[7]
(f) Commemorative stones. The teidrtolkars of Nòdrs (see [Fig. 13]), and certain stones with the same name lying between Nòdrs and Teidr, had their origin in events connected with the death of a man belonging to the village of Teidr who was once wursol at Nòdrs. When he was told to milk one of the buffaloes, he replied, “If I milk it, the milk will not fill this place,” pointing to a small depression on his thumb. Still the people told him to milk, and when he did so the milking-vessel was completely filled. Then the palikartmokh was very angry, and, taking the wand which the wursol was carrying, he struck him so that he flew in the air and fell down midway between Nòdrs and Teidr. When the people came to the place they found that the man was dead, and they tried to take up his body and carry it to the funeral place. But [[440]]the body would not move and so they held the funeral on the spot and made a tu. At the entrance of the tu they placed two women carrying pounders[8] in place of the posts or tüli, and these women were changed into stones and their pounders became the tasth of the entrance of the pen. The stones which are now found on the spot are the remains of the pen and the teidrtolkars of Nòdrs marks the spot where the wursol milked the buffalo.
FIG. 59.—THE MEMORIAL OF KEIREVAN.
In the village of Tovalkan there is a mound shown in Fig. 59 which is much like the imudrikars of Kars, but it is of modern origin, having been made to mark the spot where Keirevan (26) fell out of a tree and was killed.