INDIA.
The number of rude-stone monuments in India is probably as great or
even greater than that of those to be found in Europe, and they are
so similar that, even if they should not turn out to be identical,
they form a most important branch of this enquiry. Even irrespective,
however, of these, the study of the history of architecture in India is
calculated to throw so much light on the problems connected with the
study of megalithic monuments in the West that, for that cause alone it
deserves much more attention than it has hitherto received.
No one, it is presumed, will now be prepared to dispute the early
civilization at least of the northern parts of India. Whether the
Aryans crossed the Indus three thousand years B.C., as I
believe, or two thousand B.C., as others contend, is of little
consequence to our present purposes. It is generally understood that
the Vedas were compiled or reduced to writing thirteen centuries before
Christ, and the Laws of Menu seven or eight hundred years before our
era, and these works betoken a civilization of some standing. Ayodia
was a great prosperous city at the time of the incidents described in
the Ramayana, and Hastinapura when the tragedy of the Mahabharata was
being enacted; and these great events took place probably one or two
thousand years before Christ, or between these two dates. Or to come a
little nearer to our time, all the circumstances depicted in all the
thousand and one legends connected with the life and teaching of Sakya
Muni (623 to 543 B.C.), describe a country with cities and
palaces, and possessing a very high state of civilization; and these
legends are so numerous and so consentaneous that they may fairly be
considered, for this purpose at least, as rising to the dignity of
history. Yet with all this we now know it for a fact that no stone
building or monument of stone now exists in India that was erected
before the time of Asoka, B.C. 250. But, besides negative
proof, we have in the early caves, 150 to 200 B.C., such
manifest proofs of the stone architecture being then a mere transcript
of wooden forms that we know certainly that we have here reached the
very _incunabula_ of a style. Of course it does not follow from this
that the cities before this time may not have been splendid or the
palaces magnificent. In Burmah and Siam the palaces and monasteries
are either wholly or mostly in wood, and these timber erections are
certainly more gorgeous and quite as expensive as the stone buildings
of the West, and the Indians seem to have been content with this less
durable style of architecture till the influence of the Bactrian Greeks
induced them to adopt the clumsier but more durable material of stone
for their buildings.
With such an example before us, ought we to be surprised if the rude
inhabitants of Europe were content with earth and the forms into which
it could be shaped, till the example of the Romans taught them the
use of the more durable and more strongly accentuated material? Nor
will it do to contend that, if our forefathers got this hint from the
Romans, they would have adopted the Roman style of architecture with
it. The Indians certainly did not do so. Their early attempts at stone
architecture are wooden, in the strictest sense, and retained their
wooden forms for two or three centuries almost unchanged, and when
gradually they became more and more appropriate to the newly adopted
material, it was not Greek or foreign forms that they adopted, but
forms of their own native invention. In Asoka's reign we have Greek or
rather Assyrian ornaments in one of his lâts,[531] and something like
a Persepolitan capital in some of the earlier caves,[532] but these
died out, and it is not till after five centuries that we really find
anything like the arts of Bactria at Amravati.[533] As the civilized
race copied their own wooden forms with all the elaborateness of which
wood carving is capable, so the rude race seems to have used the forms
which were appropriate to their status, and which were the only forms
they could appreciate.
Another peculiarity of Indian architecture is worth pointing out here
as tending to modify one of the most generally received dogmas of
Western criticism. In speaking of such monuments as New Grange or the
tombs at Locmariaker, which are roofed by overlapping stones forming
what is technically called a horizontal arch, it is usual to assume
that this must have been done before the invention of the Roman or
radiating arch form. So far as Indian experience goes, this assumption
is by no means borne out. When Kutb u deen wished to signalise his
triumph over the idolaters, he, in 1206 A.D., employed the
Hindus to erect a mosque for him in his recently acquired capital of
Delhi. In the centre of the screen forming the mosque, he designed a
great archway 22 feet span, 53 feet in height, and formed as a pointed
arch of two sides of an equilateral spherical triangle. This was the
usual form of Saracenic openings at Ghazni or Balkh in the beginning
of the thirteenth century, but it was almost beyond the power of the
Hindus to construct it. They did so, however, and it still stands,
though crippled; but all the courses are horizontal, like their own
domes, except two long stones which form the apex of the arch.[534] In
a very few years after this time the Mahommedan conquerors had taught
the subject Hindus to build radiating arches, and every mosque or
Mahommedan building from that time forward is built with arches formed
as we form them; but, except a very few in the reign of the cosmopolite
Akbar, no single Hindu building or temple, even down to the present
time, has an arch in the sense in which we understand the word.
One of the most striking instances of this peculiarity is found in the
province of Guzerat. There are still to be seen the splendid ruins of
the city of Ahmedabad built by the Mahommedan kings of the province
between the years 1411 and 1583.[535] There every mosque and every
building is arched or vaulted according to one system. In the same
province stands the sacred city of Palitana, with its hundreds of
temples, some of a date as early as the eleventh, many built within
the limits of the present century, and some now in the course of
construction; yet, so far as is known, there is not a single arch
within the walls of the city. So it is throughout India: side by
side stand the buildings of the two great sects--those belonging to
the Mahommedans universally arched, those belonging to the Hindus
as certainly avoiding this form of construction. This is the more
remarkable as the moment we cross the frontier of India we find the
arch universally prevalent in Burmah, as early certainly as the tenth
or eleventh century, and in all the forms, round, pointed, and flat,
which we use in the present day.[536] But if we extend our researches
a little farther east, we again come to a country full of the most
wonderful buildings known to exist anywhere, with bridges and viaducts
and vaults; but not one single arch has yet been discovered in the
length and breadth of the kingdom of Cambodia.
All this is no doubt very anomalous and strange, though, if it were
worth while, some of it might be accounted for and explained. This,
however, is not the place for doing so: all that is here required is to
point out the existence of the apparent anomaly, in order that we may
not too hurriedly jump to chronological conclusions from the existence
or absence of arches in any given building.
Another most instructive lesson bearing on our present subject that is
to be derived from the study of Indian antiquities will be found in
that curious but persistent juxtaposition that everywhere prevails of
the highest form of progressive civilization beside the lowest types of
changeless barbarism. Everywhere in India the past is the present, and
the present is the past; not, as is usually assumed, that the Hindu is
immutable--quite the contrary. When contemporary history first dawned
on us, India was Buddhist, and for eight or nine centuries that was the
prevalent religion of the state. There is not now a single Buddhist
establishment in the length and breadth of the land. The religions
which superseded Buddhism were then new, and have ever since been
changing, so that India now contains more religions and more numerous
sects than any portion of the world of the same extent. Even within
the last six centuries one-fifth of the population have adopted the
Mahommedan religion, and are quite prepared to follow any new form of
faith that may be the fashion of the day. But beside all this never
ceasing change, there are tribes and races which remain immutable.
To take one instance among a hundred that might be adduced. Ougein
was a great commercial capital in the days of the Greek. It was the
residence of Asoka, 260 B.C.[537] It was the Ozene of the
Periplus, the capital of the great Vicramaditya in the middle of the
fifth century,[538] and it was the city chosen by Jey Sing for the
erection of one of his great observatories in the reign of Akbar. Yet
almost within sight of this city are to be found tribes of Bhils,
living now as they lived long before the Christian era. They are not
agricultural, hardly pastoral, but live chiefly by the chase. With
their bows and arrows they hunt the wild game as their forefathers did
from time immemorial. They never cared to learn to read or write, and
have no literature of any sort, hardly any tradition. Yet the Bhil was
there before the Brahmin; and the proudest sovereign of Rajpootana
acknowledges the Bhil as lord of the soil, and no new successor to
the throne considers his title as complete till he has received the
tika at the hands of the nomad.[539] If India were a country divided
by high mountain-ranges, or impenetrable forests, or did impassable
deserts anywhere exist, this co-existence of two forms of society might
be accounted for. But the contrary is the case. From the Himalayas to
Cape Comorin, no obstacle exists, nor, so far as we know, ever did
exist, to the freest intercourse between the various races inhabiting
the country. If we may believe the traditions on which the epic of the
Ramayana was founded, armies traversed the length and the breadth of
the land one thousand, it may be two thousand, years before Christ.
The Brahmins carried their arms and their literature to the south at a
very early age. The Buddhists spread everywhere. The Jains succeeded
them. The Mahommedans conquered and settled in Mysore and the Carnatic,
but in vain. The Bhil, the Cole, the Gond, the Toda, and other tribes,
remain as they were, and practise their own rites and follow the
customs of their forefathers as if the stranger had never come among
them.
EASTERN INDIA.
To turn from these generalities to two instances more directly
illustrative of our European experience. The first is that of the
Khonds, the Druids of the East, worshipping in groves, _priscâ
formidine sacris_, and indulging in human sacrifices and other
unamiable practices of our forefathers.[540] These tribes exist partly
on a range of hills bounding the province of Cuttack on the western
side and partly extend into the plains themselves. Almost within
their boundaries there exists a low range of rocky hills known as
the Udyagiri, in which are found a series of Buddhist caves, many
of them excavated before the Christian era, and as beautiful and as
interesting as any caves in India.[541] A little beyond this are seen
the great tower of the Bobaneswar temple and of the hundred and one
smaller fanes dedicated to the worship of Siva, which was established
here in all its splendour in the seventh century;[542] and a little
farther on, rises on the verge of the ocean the great tower of the
temple of Juggernaut, at Puri, established in the twelfth century for
the worship of that form of Vishnu.[543] Yet in defiance of all this,
in close proximity to the shrines of the gentle ascetic who devoted
his life to the prevention of the shedding of the blood of the meanest
of created beings, in sight of Bobaneswar and Puri, Macpherson tells
us, unconsciously almost repeating the words of Tacitus[544]: "The
Khonds use neither temples nor images in their worship. They cannot
comprehend and regard as absurd the idea of building a house in honour
of a deity, or in the expectation that he will be peculiarly present
in any place resembling a human habitation. Groves kept sacred from
the axe, hoar rocks, the tops of hills, fountains, and the banks of
streams, are in their eyes the fittest places for worship." It was in
these sacred and venerable groves, that annually human victims were
offered up to appease the wrath of the dreaded Tari, and to procure
fertility for the fields. In 1836 we first interfered to put a stop to
this, and before the Mutiny believed we had been successful. Perhaps
we may have been so, but if our strong repressive hand were once
removed, it cannot be doubted but the sacrifices would be instantly
resumed. What the Buddhists and the Brahmins, working during at least
two thousand years, have failed to accomplish, we strangers cannot
expect to succeed in, in a few years, unless indeed we adopt the system
followed by our forefathers, and are determined on extirpating those
who obstinately adhere to such practices. Had it not been that first
the Roman, and then the Celt, by sword and cord set vigorously to
improve the older race, we might now have human sacrifices celebrated
on the plains of Bauce in the neighbourhood of Chartres, and find
people quietly erecting dolmens in the valley of the Dordogne.
The practices, however, of a Claudius or a Simon de Montfort
are repugnant to the feelings of the Indians, and so long as no
political issue is at stake, they rarely interfere with the religious
proclivities of their neighbours.
When from the hills inhabited by the Khonds we cross the delta of the
Ganges in a northerly direction, and come to the Khassia hills, we
find a very different state of things, but equally interesting as an
illustration of our present studies. These hills are situated between
the valley of Assam and the plains of Sylhet, and, rising to a height
of some 5000 to 6000 feet, catch the rains during the south-west
monsoon, and but for this would be one of the most delightful sanitaria
of the Bengal province. A country, however, where 300 inches of rain
fall in three months is, for at least a quarter of the year, an
undesirable abode, and it is difficult also to keep any soil on the
rocks. Throughout the whole of the western portion of the hilly region,
inhabited by tribes bearing the generic name of Khassias, rude-stone
monuments exist in greater numbers than perhaps in any other portion
of the globe of the same extent (woodcut No. 200). All travellers who
have visited the country have been struck with the fact and with the
curious similarity of their forms to those existing in Europe.[545]
So like, indeed, are they that it has long been the fashion to assume
their identity, and it has consequently been often hoped that, if we
could only find out why the Indian examples were erected, we might
discover the motive which guided those in Europe who constructed
similar monuments, while at the same time there seemed every reason for
believing that it would not be difficult to discover the motives which
led to the erection of the Indian examples. The natives make no mystery
about them, and many were erected within the last few years, or are
being erected now, and they are identical in form with those which are
grey with years, and must have been set up in the long forgotten past.
Here, therefore, there seemed a chance of at last solving the mystery
of the great stones. Greater familiarity with them has, however,
rather tended to dispel these illusions.
[Illustration: 200. View in Khassia Hills. By H. Walters.]
The Khassias burn their dead, which is a practice that hardly could
have had its origin in their present abodes, inasmuch as, during three
months in the year, it is impossible, from the rain, to light a fire
out of doors, and consequently, if any one dies during that period, the
body is placed in a coffin, formed from the hollowed trunk of a tree,
and pickled in honey, till a fair day admits of his obsequies being
properly performed.[546] According to Mr. Walters, the urns containing
the ashes are placed in little circular cells, with flat tops like
stools, which exist in the immediate proximity of all the villages, and
are used as seats by the villagers on all state occasions of assembly;
but whether one stool is used for a whole family, or till it is filled
with urns, or whether a new stool is prepared when a great man dies,
has not yet been ascertained.[547]
[Illustration: 201. Khassia Funeral Seats. From Yule.]
The origin of the menhirs is somewhat different. If any of the Khassia
tribe falls ill or gets into difficulties, he prays to some one of
his deceased ancestors, whose spirit he fancies may be able and
willing to assist him. Father or mother, uncle or aunt, or some more
distant relative, may do equally well, and to enforce his prayer, he
vows that, if it is granted, he will erect a stone in honour of the
deceased.[548] This he never fails to perform, and if the cure has been
rapid, or the change in the luck so sudden as to be striking, others
address their prayers to the same person, and more stones are vowed.
It thus sometimes happens that a person, man or woman, who was by no
means remarkable in life, may have five, or seven, or ten--two fives,
for the number must always be unequal--in their honour. The centre
stone generally is crowned by a capital, or turban-like ornament, and
sometimes two are joined together, forming a trilithon, but then they
apparently count as one. Major Austen mentions a set of five being
erected in 1869 on the opposite side of the road to an original set of
the same number with which an old lady had previously been honoured, in
consequence of the services which after her death she had rendered to
her tribe.[549]
[Illustration: 202. Menhirs and Tables. From Schlagintweit.]
[Illustration: 203. Turban Stone, with Stone Table.]
[Illustration: 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.
WESTERN INDIA.
On the other side of India there are some groups of rude-stone
monuments similar to those found in the Khassia hills, and apparently
erected for similar purposes. They are, however, much less perfectly
known, and are described or at least drawn by only one traveller.[551]
The most conspicuous of these is one near Belgaum. It consists of
two rows of thirteen stones each, and one in front of them of three
stones--the numbers being always uneven, as in Bengal--and on the
opposite side four of those small altars, or tables, which always
accompany these groups of stones on the Khassia hills. These, however,
are very much smaller, the central stone being only about 4 feet high,
and falling off to about a foot in height at the end of each row.[552]
Whether they were or were not dedicated to the same purpose, Colonel
Leslie does not inform us; but their resemblance is so marked that
there seems very little doubt that they were dedicated or vowed to the
spirits of deceased ancestors.
Another class of circular fanes looks at first sight more promising as
a means of comparison with ours. Generally they seem to consist of one
or three stones, in front of which a circular space--in the largest
instance 40 feet in diameter, but more generally 20 to 30 feet only--is
marked out by a number of small stones, from 8 to 20 inches in height,
while the great central stones are only 3 feet high. To compare these,
therefore, with our great megalithic monuments seems rather absurd.
So far as can be made out, the central stone seems to represent a
local village deity, called Vetal or Betal, who, like Nadzu Pennu, the
village god, one of the inferior deities of the Khonds, is familiarly
represented merely by a rude-stone, placed under a tree.[553] In the
instance of Vetal, it seems when a sacrifice--generally of a cock--is
to be made, all those who are interested bring their own stones, and
arrange them, in a circular fashion, round the place where the ceremony
is to be performed; hence the superficial likeness. None, so far as is
known, are ancient, nor indeed has it at all been made out when and how
the worship of this deity arose. It is evidently a local superstition
of some of the indigenous tribes, which latterly under our tolerant
rule has become more prominent, for the sect is hated and despised by
the Brahmins; and so far as facts are concerned, it would be difficult
to carry back the history of this form of architecture for a hundred
years from this time. It may be older, but there is nothing to show
that it is so.
So far as the monuments above mentioned are concerned, there seems
nothing in them that affords a real analogy or establishes any direct
connexion between the European and Indian examples. The sacrifice of
a cock to Vetal, when in sickness, looks like a similar sacrifice to
Esculapius, and the human sacrifices and sacred groves of the Khonds
are very Druidical in appearance; but no one probably will be found to
contend that Vetal and Esculapius are the same god, or that the Khonds
are Celts; and without this being established, the argument halts.
The case, however, seems different when we turn to the sepulchral
arrangements of the aboriginal tribes of India. Here the analogies are
so striking that it is hard to believe that they are accidental, though
equally hard to understand how and when the intercourse could have
taken place which led to their similarity.
[Illustration: 205. Dolmen at Rajunkoloor. From a drawing by Colonel
Meadows Taylor.]
[Illustration: 206. Plan of Open Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.]
[Illustration: 207. Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.]
[Illustration: 208. View of Closed Dolmen at Rajunkoloor.]
As in Europe, the sepulchral monuments of India may be divided into
two great classes--the dolmens and the tumuli. In the present state
of our knowledge it is difficult to say which are the more numerous.
According to Colonel Meadows Taylor,[554] who is our best authority
on the subject, the dolmens are of two kinds--those consisting of four
stones, that is to say, three supporting stones and one cap-stone--thus
leaving one side open--and those in which the chamber is closed by a
fourth stone; in the latter case this fourth stone has invariably a
circular opening in it, like the Circassian examples (woodcuts Nos.
192, 193), and the dolmen at Trie (No. 127). These forms are both shown
in woodcut No. 205, representing two at Rajunkoloor, in the province
of Sholapore, between the Bheema and Kistnah, near their junction. The
side-stones of the larger monument measure 15 feet 3 inches by 9 feet
in height, and more than 1 foot in thickness. The cap-stone is 15 feet
9 inches by 10 feet 9 inches, and the internal space 8 feet by 6 feet,
the third slab being placed at some distance from the rear, and between
the two side-stones. The same arrangement is followed in the closed
dolmen, the cross slabs being inside, as shown in the view (woodcut No.
208), and plan (woodcut No. 207). The interior of the closed dolmen
contained a little black mould on the surface. Below this a greyish
white earth, brought from a distance, with which were found human ashes
and portions of bones and charcoal mixed, and pieces of broken pottery,
red and black. These rested on the solid rock on which the dolmen was
erected. Nothing whatever was found in any of the open dolmens; but
whether this arose from their being plundered, or from being exposed,
is not clear. It could hardly have been that they were not sepulchral.
They seem at least to be mixed up indiscriminately with the others,
and except their being open, there is nothing to distinguish them. The
arrangement of these dolmens in plan is peculiar. As will be seen from
the next woodcut (No. 209), they are as regular as in our cemeteries,
and apparently in certain directions would have gone on extending _ad
infinitum_; but in another direction are cairns irregularly spaced, and
showing a distinction in the mode of burying which at present it is
difficult to account for.
At a place in the Raichore Doab, called Yemmee Gooda, four of the
dolmens of the first class were surrounded by double circles of stones;
but this does not seem to be a usual arrangement.
[Illustration: 209. Arrangement of Dolmens at Rajunkoloor. By Colonel
Meadows Taylor.]
Almost more interesting than the dolmens are the cairns. The following
plan of the group at Jewurgi, a place fifty miles, as the crow flies,
north-east from Rajunkoloor, will explain their arrangement and
juxtaposition. They, too, seem to divide themselves into two classes,
as shown in the two sections--those with a summit-cist, like those in
Auvergne, and those without; all, however, apparently have single and
double circles of stones surrounding them. Two stones are generally
found protruding slightly through the surface of the tumulus, and when
an excavation is made between them, the cist is found laid in their
direction at a depth of 9 to 10 feet below the surface. This seems to
be generally double, and contains skeletons laid on their faces. At
one end, but outside the cist, are quantities of pottery, and above
the cist a number of skeletons, thrown in pellmell, and over these a
thick layer of earth and gravel. Detached heads are found sometimes
in the cists, sometimes outside among the pottery, which led Colonel
Taylor to the conclusion that human sacrifices had been practised at
the time these cairns were raised, and that these are the remains of
the wives or slaves of the defunct. It may be so, but it may also be
that, as in Europe, we must make a distinction between battle-fields
and cemeteries; and I confess the idea that the cairns at Jewurgi mark
a battle-field, and the dolmens at Rajunkoloor a cemetery, appears to
account for the phenomena better than the other hypothesis. If this is
not so, as the distance between Rajunkoloor and Jewurgi is only fifty
miles, we must assume either that the district was inhabited by two
different races of men at the same time, practising different modes of
sepulture, or we must concede that the one is older than the other, and
that the one race had been dispossessed and was succeeded by the other.
The difficulties attending either of these suppositions appear to me
infinitely greater than those involved in assuming that the one is a
battle-field, the other a cemetery. The only thing that would make me
hesitate about this is the presence of several cairns at Rajunkoloor.
These, however, do not appear to have been opened, and we do not
consequently know whether the same instances of decapitation were to
be found, or whether the bodies were arranged in the same manner as at
Jewurgi.
[Illustration: 210. Cairns at Jewurgi. By Colonel Meadows Taylor.]
[Illustration: 211. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.]
[Illustration: 212. Section of Cairn at Jewurgi.]
Be this as it may, if these sections are to be depended on, it appears
to be tolerably certain that these tombs cannot be old. It seems
impossible that human bones could remain so entire and perfect as these
are represented to be, so near the surface and in a recently disturbed
soil, where rain and moisture must easily have penetrated at all times.
A medical man on the spot might determine whether two or three or five
centuries have elapsed since these bodies were laid where they are
found; but I should be very much surprised if he raised their date
beyond the last named figure. It is hazardous, however, to pronounce on
such questions from the scanty data we have before us.
There is still another class of dolmens, or rather kistvaens, common
on the Nilgiri hills and throughout the hill region of Malabar. In it
the chamber is formed like those described above, but always buried
in the earth, only showing the cap-stone flush with the surface of
the soil. One of these, in the Coorg country, is worth quoting, from
its possessing two circular apertures, like those of the Plas Newydd
tumulus (woodcut No. 48). This one, however, has a diaphragm dividing
it into two chambers. If the Welsh one was so partitioned, the wall has
disappeared.
[Illustration: 213. Double Dolmen, Coorg.[555]]
[Illustration: 214. Tomb, Nilgiri Hills. From a drawing by Sir Walter
Elliot.]
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.
[Illustration: 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.
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.
AGE OF THE STONE MONUMENTS.
A glimmering of light seemed to be thrown on this subject by a passage
quoted by Sir Walter Elliot from a missionary report from Travancore,
in which it was stated that an Indian tribe still continued to bury
in "cromlechs," like those of Coimbatore, "constructed with four
stones and a covering one."[567] If this were so, we might have got
hold of one end of a thread which would lead us backwards through the
labyrinth. It looked so like a crucial instance that Mr. Walhouse
kindly wrote to Mr. Baker, the author of the report in question, and
sent me an extract from his reply, which is curious. "The M[a]la
Arryians are a race of men dwelling in dense jungles and hills.
Cromlechs are common among them, and they worship the spirits of their
ancestors, to whom they make annual offerings. At the present day they
are accustomed to take corpses into the sacred groves, and place small
slabs of stones, in the form of a box, and, after making offerings
of arrack, sweetmeats, &c., to the departed spirit, supposed to be
hovering near, a small stone is placed in the model box or vault, and
it is covered over with great ceremony. The spirit is supposed to dwell
in the stone, which in many cases is changed at the annual feast into
a rough silver or brass figure." As Mr. Walhouse remarks, this looks
like an echo from megalithic times. The people, having lost the power
of erecting such huge structures as abound in their hills and on the
plains around, from which they may have been driven at some early
period, are content still to keep up the traditions of a primæval usage
by these miniature shams. There seems little doubt that this is the
case, and it is especially interesting to have observed it here, as it
accounts for what has often puzzled Indian antiquaries. In Coorg and
elsewhere, miniature urns and miniature utensils, such as one sees used
as toys in European nurseries, are often found in these tombs, and have
given rise to a tradition among the natives that they belong to a race
of pigmies: whereas it is evident that it is only a dying out of an
ancient faith, when, as is so generally the case, the symbol supersedes
the reality.
The articles found in the cairns and dolmens in India unfortunately
afford us very little assistance in determining their age. The pottery
that is found in quantities in them everywhere, is to all appearances,
identical in form, in texture, and in glaze with the pottery of the
present day. No archaic forms have, so far as I know, been found
anywhere, nor anything that would indicate a progression. This might be
used as an argument to prove how modern they were. In India, however,
it would be most unsafe to do so. We have no knowledge as to how long
ago these forms were introduced into or invented in that country, and
no reason to suppose that they would change and progress as ours do. So
far as our present knowledge extends, the pottery found in these tombs
may have been made within the last few centuries, but it may also be a
thousand or two thousand years old for anything we know to the contrary.
The same remarks apply to the gold and silver ornaments and generally
to the trinkets found in the tombs. Similar objects may be picked up in
the bazaars in remote districts at the present day, but they may also
have been in use in the time of Alexander the Great. Iron spear-heads
and iron utensils of the most modern shape and pattern are among the
commonest objects found in these tombs; and if anyone were arguing for
victory, and not for the truth, these might be adduced to prove that
the tombs belonged to what the Germans call "the youngest Iron age."
This reasoning has no application whatever to India. Flint implements
are found there, and very similar to those of Europe, but never in the
tombs. Bronze was probably known to the Indians at a remote age, but
no bronze implements have been buried with the dead so far as we yet
know, though iron has been, and that frequently; but its presence tells
us nothing as to age. So far we know, the Indians were as familiar
with the use of iron in the fourth century B.C. as the Greeks
themselves were, and, for anything we know to the contrary, may have
understood the art of extracting it from the ore and using it for arms
and cutting-tools before these arts were practised in Europe.
[Illustration: 216. Iron Pillar at the Kutub, Delhi. From a
photograph.]
One of the most curious and interesting illustrations of this is
found in the existence of the celebrated iron pillar of Dhava, in the
courtyard of the mosque at the Kutub, near Delhi. This consists of
a solid shaft of wrought iron, standing 22 feet 6 inches out of the
ground and is 5 feet 6 inches in circumference at about 5 feet from
its base. When I visited it, the report was that Colonel Baird Smith
had dug down and found its base 16 feet below the surface. Lieutenant
Cole[568] now brings home a report that it is 26 feet deep in the
ground. Taking, however, the more moderate dimension, a single forging
nearly 40 feet long and 5 feet circumference was not made, and could
not have been made, in any country of Europe before the introduction
of steam-machinery, nor, indeed, before the invention of the Nasmyth
hammer.
There is an inscription on the pillar which, unfortunately, bears no
date; but from the form of the characters, the nature of the event it
describes,[569] coupled with the architecture of the capital of the
pillar, it leaves no doubt that it was erected in the third or fourth
century of our era.
It must be left to those practically skilled in the working of metals
to explain how any human being could work in close proximity to such
a mass heated to a welding heat, or how it was possible without
steam-machinery to manipulate so enormous a bar of iron. The question
that interests us here is, how long must the Hindus have been familiar
with the use of iron and the mode of working it before they could
conceive the idea of such a monument and carry it into execution? It
could hardly have been centuries, it must have been nearer thousands of
years, and yet they erect rude-stone monuments in India at the present
day![570]
One other instance, at the lower end of the scale, may be quoted as
also bearing directly on this subject. Of all the people of India the
Khassias are probably the most expert in extracting iron from its ores
and manufacturing it when made; and their mode of doing this is so
original, and, though rude, so effective, that there can be no doubt
that it is the result of long experience among themselves.[571] They
have, in fact, practised the art from time immemorial; yet though
possessing iron tools for, it may be, thousands of years, they at
the present day adhere to the practice of using rude unhewn-stone
monuments, like the Jews, in preference to those "which any iron tool
had touched at any time."[572] Nor can it be argued that they do
this because they do not know better. As just mentioned, at any time,
certainly within the last thousand years, they might have seen the
Buddhist or Hindu stonemasons of Kamarupa erecting the most elaborately
carved stone temples, and can now see the domes of the mosques which
the Mahommedans erected in the cities of Sylhet three or four centuries
ago.
[Illustration: 217. Sculpture on under side of Cap-stone of a Nilgiri
Dolmen.]
Although it thus happens that all these _à priori_ reasonings and
mistaken analogies, drawn from our own progressive state, which are so
familiar to European antiquaries, break down at once when applied to
India, still there are a few indications from which approximate dates
may be obtained, and many more could, no doubt, be found if looked
for. One of these is, that the greater number of the dolmens of the
Nilgiri hills are sculptured; but only one of the drawings on them, so
far as I know, has been published,[573] and though it is ungracious to
say so, I fear that it is not a very faithful representation. It is,
however, sufficiently so to enable us to recognise at once a similarity
to a class of monuments very common in the plains. These are called
Viracull, if destined to commemorate men or heroes, and Masteecull if
erected in honour of women who sacrifice themselves on their husband's
funereal pile. Colonel Mackenzie collected drawings of more than one
hundred of these, which are now in the India Office, and photographs of
many others have been made but not published.
The similarity in the costume and style of art displayed in the
preceding woodcut with that of the memorial stones leaves little or
no doubt of their being approximately of the same age. As most of the
memorial stones are inscribed and their dates at least approximately
known, if the identity can be established the date of the dolmens can
also be determined. Till, however, some one will take the trouble of
photographing the cairns, so as to enable us to compare them with the
standing stones, no certainty can be obtained; but as none of the
sculptured stones go back a thousand years, and those most like the
woodcut cannot claim five centuries of antiquity, these sculptured
cairns in the Nilgiris cannot be so very old as is sometimes assumed.
[Illustration: 218. Dolmen at Iwullee. From a photograph.]
The second instance is curious and instructive. In the centre of the
courtyard of a now ruined Sivite temple at Iwullee, in Dharwar, in the
very centre of the dolmen country, now stands a regular tripod dolmen
of the usual shape (woodcut No. 218). The question is, how got it
there? No one who knows anything of India will, I presume, argue that
the Brahminical followers of Siva would erect the sanctuary of their
god in front of the tomb of one of the despised aboriginal tribes,
if still reverenced by them, or would have neglected to utilize
it if neglected. One of two things therefore only seems possible.
Either a Korumber, or native chief of some denomination, stipulated
that on his conversion to the faith of the Brahmins, if he erected a
temple in honour of his newly-adopted god, he should be allowed to be
buried, "more majorum," in the courtyard. This is possible, but hardly
probable. It seems more likely that, after the temple was desecrated
and neglected, some native thought the spot fit and appropriate for
his last resting-place, and was buried there accordingly. From its
architecture, there is no doubt that the age of the temple may be
carried back as far as the thirteenth century, but it more probably
belongs to the fourteenth. According to the first hypothesis, the age
of the dolmen would be that of the temple; according to the second,
one, two, or three centuries more modern.
[Illustration: 219. Stone Monuments at Shahpoor.]
A third indirect piece of evidence is derived from Colonel Meadows
Taylor's paper in the 'Irish Transactions.' He represents a tolerably
extensive group of these monuments as placed immediately outside the
city gate at Shahpoor, and from what he says of them they are evidently
of the same age as the other examples he quotes. From their position
and arrangement, it does not seem doubtful that they are the usual
extramural cemetery so generally attached to Indian cities, and they
are, in fact, subsequent in date to the erection of the gate in front
of which they are placed. The gateway, I learn from a letter from
Colonel Meadows Taylor, undoubtedly belongs to the Mahommedan period.
It is a regular arch, of the usual pointed form, and consequently
subsequent to 1347 A.D., when the Bahmany dynasty first
established themselves in this quarter. This being so, the masons who
built the gate would certainly have utilized the tombs of the pagans
had they existed previously. They must, therefore, be subsequent to
the gate; and as it cannot be five centuries old, we have a limit to
their age beyond which we cannot go.
[Illustration: 220. Cross at Katapur. From a photograph.]
Our next example is still more curious and interesting. In the cold
weather of 1867-8, Mr. Mulheran, when attached to the Trigonometrical
Survey of India, came accidentally across a great group of "cromlechs,"
situated on the banks of the Godavery, near Nirmul, about halfway
between Hyderabad and Nagpore, in Central India. Some of these he
photographed, and sent an account of them to the Asiatic Society of
Bengal,[574] from which the following particulars are gleaned. "The
majority of the cromlechs consist of a number of upright stones,
sunk in the ground in the form of a square, and covered with one
or two large slabs of sandstone. In some two bodies appear to have
been interred, and in others only one. The crosses are found in the
neighbourhood of Malúr and Katapur, two villages on the Nizam's side
of the river. The crosses at Katapur (woodcut No. 220) are, with one
exception, uninjured. All are situated to the right of the cromlechs
near which they have been erected. Judging from the one lying exposed
at Malúr, they are all above 10 feet in length, although only 6 to
7 feet appear above ground. They all consist of one stone, and are
all of the latest form. No information of any kind could be obtained
regarding the people by whom the crosses or cromlechs were erected.
There can be no doubt, however, that the crosses are memorials of the
faith of Christians buried in their vicinity." Close by is a cave,
before which a cross was erected, which Mr. Mulheran assumes was thrown
down by the Brahmins when they took possession of it; and he adds, "I
enclose a note from Captain Glasfurd, who sent a packet of implements,
rings, and utensils, found in two of the cromlechs he opened, to the
Asiatic Society." No such packet, however, ever arrived, and we are,
therefore, left to his photographs and descriptions from which to draw
our conclusions.
[Illustration: 221. Dolmen at Katapur. From a photograph.]
[Illustration: 222. Dolmen with Cross in Nirmul Jungle.]
In the first place, I think it can hardly be doubted that the crosses
are Christian emblems; and secondly, that the cromlechs and crosses
are of the same date. Their juxtaposition and whole appearance render
escape from this conclusion apparently inevitable. The question,
therefore, is, when could any community of native Christians have
existed in India who would bury in dolmens and use the cross as their
emblems? Their distance from the coast and the form of the cross seem
at once to cut them off from all connexion with St. Thomas's mission
or that of the early apostles, even assuming that the records of
these are authentic. My impression is that this form of cross was not
introduced as an out-of-doors self-standing sign till, say, the sixth
or seventh century.[575] On the other hand, it is extremely improbable
that any such community could have existed after the Mahommedan
invasion at the end of the thirteenth century. Between these limits
we know that the Nestorians had establishments as far east as China,
and extending in a continuous chain westward as far at least as the
Caspian;[576] and there seems to be no difficulty in assuming that,
between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries a form of Taiping
Christianity may have been introduced from the north and established
itself extensively in the western and central parts of India, but,
owing allegiance only to the potentate we know of as Prester John,
may have entirely escaped the knowledge of the Western world. Besides
helping to fix the date of the dolmens in India, this discovery opens
out a wide field for those who would investigate the early history of
the Christian Church in India. There can be little doubt that this
group is not solitary. Many more will be found, when people open their
eyes and look for them. Meanwhile it is a curious illustration of the
policy of Pope Gregory in his advice to Abbot Mellitus, alluded to
in the Introduction (page 21). It is the same thing as the dolmen at
Kerland (woodcut No. 131), and that at Arrichinaga (woodcut No. 161),
repeated in the centre of India, though probably at a somewhat later
date.
* * * * *
There is still another point of view from which these Indian monuments
may be regarded, so as to throw considerable light on the history
of their analogues in Europe, and perhaps to modify to some extent
our preconceived views regarding their history. In Ceylon there is a
class of dagoba, which, in some respects, is peculiar to the island.
Two of these will suffice for our present purposes, both in the city
of Anuradhapura, which was the capital of the country from about
B.C. 400 till the eleventh century. The first of these,
the Thupa Ramayana, was erected B.C. 161; the second, the
Lanka Ramayana, A.D. 231.[577] For the sake of the argument
it would be best to select the first for illustration; but it was,
unfortunately, so completely restored about forty years ago that, as
in the case of our unfortunate cathedrals, it requires considerable
knowledge of the style to discriminate between what is old and what
new. Notwithstanding the four centuries that elapsed between their
dates, however, they are so like one another in all essentials that it
is of little consequence which we select. Neither is large, and both
consist of nearly hemispherical domes, surmounted by a square box-like
appendage called a Tee, and both are surrounded by three rows of tall
stone pillars, as shown in the accompanying woodcut.
[Illustration: 223. Lanka Ramayana Dagoba, A.D. 231. From a
photograph.]
That the domical part of the dagoba is the lineal and direct descendant
of the sepulchral tumuli or cairns, which are found everywhere in
Northern Asia and probably existed in India in primæval times, is
hardly open to doubt. This the Buddhists early refined into a relic
shrine, probably immediately after the death of the founder of the
religion, B.C. 543; and we know from numerous excavations[578]
that the relic was placed in a cist in the centre of the mound, nearly
on the level of the soil, exactly where, and in the same manner as,
the body-containing kistvaens of our sepulchral tumuli. To this,
however, the Buddhists added a square box on the top, which either
was invented by them or copied from some earlier form; but no dagoba
was complete without it, and all the rock-cut examples and sculptured
representations of topes, with many structural ones, still possess
it. That it represented a wooden relic-casket may be assumed as
certain, but whether it was ever used as such is not quite clear. The
relics were sometimes accessible, and shown to the public on festal
occasions,[579] and unless they were contained in some external case
like this it is not easy to see how they could be got at. A third
indispensable part of a perfect dagoba was an enclosing rail. All the
early dagobas and all the sculptured representations possess this
adjunct. In the rock-cut examples and in the later structural ones the
rail becomes attached to the building as a mere ornament, but is never
omitted.
[Illustration: 224. Dolmen at Pullicondah.]
If we compare such a sepulchral mound as this at Pullicondah, near
Madras,[580] or that represented in section, woodcut No. 211, with
the Lanka or Thupa Ramayana dagobas, we cannot fail to be struck with
their similarity. Both possess the mound, the rail, and the tee; and in
this last instance it is a simulated tomb, such as many in Europe are
suspected of having been. That a people might both bury in barrows and
erect domical cairns to contain relics would not necessarily involve a
proof of the one form being copied from the other; but that both should
be surmounted by a simulated sarcophagus or shrine, and both surrounded
by one, two, or three rows of useless stones, points to a direct
imitation of the one from the other which can hardly be accidental.
Assuming for the nonce that the one is copied from the other, the
ordinary mode of reasoning with which we are familiar in Europe would
be then something like this. If the Thupa Ramayana were erected
B.C. 161, this cairn at Pullicondah must probably be as old as
B.C. 1000, for it would take many centuries before so rude a
style of architecture could be reformed into so polished an example as
the Thupa Ramayana, which, as before stated, we may assume as identical
with the Lanka Ramayana (woodcut No. 223).
[Illustration: 225. Rail at Sanchi, near Bhilsa.]
The conclusions I have arrived at are diametrically opposed to this
view. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, the architectural
material of India was wood, down to B.C. 250 or 300. It then
became timidly lithic, but retained all its wooden forms and simulated
carpentry fastenings down, at all events, to the Christian era. The
rail at Sanchi, which was erected in the course of the two centuries
preceding our era, is still essentially wooden in all its parts, so
much so that it is difficult to see how it could be constructed in
stone,[581] and these pillars round the Ceylonese dagobas are copies of
wooden posts, and not such forms as in any number of centuries would
have grown out of rude-stone forms. Had they been derived from the
latter original they would have been thick, strong and massive, and
never have assumed forms so curiously attenuated as we find here. It
is difficult to see what these stone pillars or posts were originally
intended for. It may have been either that garlands might be hung upon
them on festal occasions, as we see represented in the sculptures, or
that pictures might be suspended from them, as Fa Hian, who visited
this place in the year 400, tells us was done all the way from
Anuradhapura to Mehentele on the occasion of a great procession in
honour of the Tooth relic which was there exposed to public view.[582]
Be all this as it may, the question which this comparison raises is
simply this: If we admit the similarity between the Pullicondah cairn
and the Lanka Ramayana Tope, and that the one grew out of the other,
it seems to me perfectly evident that the adjunct of the Tope grew out
of a wooden and not out of a rude-stone original. If this is so, and
if the Tope did not grow out of the cairn, the conclusion seems to me
inevitable that the cairn is only a rude copy of a polished original.
The same conclusion hinted at above was forced on me by the examination
of the rude-stone circles which crowd round the elaborate tope at
Amravati. Generally, I know of no hypothesis by which the phenomenon
of polished-stone buildings, with known dates, existing in India for
the last 2000 years side by side with rude-stone monuments which are
being erected at this day, can be accounted for, unless we give up our
favourite system of sequence and are content to take facts as we find
them.
It is quite certain there were no hewn-stone buildings in India before
the year 250 B.C., and my impression is that none of the
rude-stone monuments now existing there were erected till five, it may
be ten centuries from that time, and when they once began that there is
no break in the sequence to the present day.
* * * * *
I know nothing that can be fairly urged against this reasoning, except
our own ignorance, and that of the natives themselves, with regard
to the origin and date of these monuments. Neither is much to be
wondered at, as it is only so lately that Europeans have turned their
attention to the subject, and the natives know so little about their
own monuments that it would be strange indeed if they knew anything
at all about those of the hated and despised Dasyus. Any one who has
travelled in India knows what sort of information he gets even from
the best and most intelligent Brahmins with regard to the dates of the
temples they and their forefathers have administered in ever since
their erection. One thousand or two or three thousand years is a
moderate age for temples which we know were certainly erected within
the last two or three centuries. Or ask any native about the date of
the rock-cut temples at Ellora or Elephanta, he at once glibly answers,
they were erected by the Pandus, 3101 B.C.; and if he breaks
loose from that landmark, ten or twenty thousand years is the least you
can expect. Yet we know now, from inscriptions and other data, that no
rock-cut temple can be carried further back than the second century
B.C.
In this infantile state of the native mind it costs them nothing to
hide their ignorance in the mists of thousands of years when questioned
about these rude stones, but their testimony is absolutely worthless,
and it is only by processes like those just described that we can
hope to arrive at the truth. Among races so unchangeable as some of
those existing in India they may carry us back to a time prior to
the Christian era with some classes of monuments; but, unless I am
very much mistaken, it will be found that all those mentioned in the
preceding pages are of comparatively recent date and are members of an
unbroken series which continues to the present day.
COMPARISON OF EASTERN WITH WESTERN DOLMENS.
We are now in a position to approach one of the most interesting, but
at the same time most difficult, branches of the inquiry we are engaged
upon, which is the connexion, if any, that exists between these Indian
rude-stone monuments and those we find in Europe. The difficulties,
however, do not appear to be so much inherent in the essence of the
subject as in its novelty. It has never fairly been approached by any
modern writer, and would consequently require an amount of illustration
incompatible with such a work as this to make it clear, or, on the
other hand, it is necessary to assume an amount of information on the
part of the public which it is feared hardly anywhere exists.
The architectural evidence, as detailed in the preceding pages, seems
of a nature difficult to resist. It is easy and generally correct to
assume that men in certain stages of civilization will do the same
thing or things, in a manner so similar that it is difficult to
discriminate between them. There would thus be no improbability in
assuming that all men would raise a mound of earth over the dead bodies
of their buried ancestors, or that they would protect their bodies
from being crushed by the superincumbent weight, by a cist or coffin
more or less artificially formed of stone or wood. It may even further
be granted that when having got so far they would naturally improve
and enlarge this cist into a dolmen or chamber and provide it with an
external entrance. All these things being found together would by no
means prove a necessary connexion between two races using them, further
than that the races using or inventing these forms must have belonged
to the same family of tomb-building ancestral-worshipping people. But
when we find two distinct people putting this cist outside, on the
tumulus in the open air, and piercing one of the slabs in it with a
circular hole 6 or 8 inches in diameter, we come to a coincidence that
can hardly be considered accidental. As there was no writing and no
post, either some tribe must have migrated from the east to the west
and introduced the form, or _vice versâ_, some European must have
taught the Indians the advantages of this hole, whatever they were; and
having been once taught to adopt, they afterwards continued to employ
it.
A still more striking instance is that already pointed out, of the
combination of a central cistvaen containing a body inside a mound with
a simulated cist on the top outside, and several circles of stones on
or around the mound externally. All this is so complicated and shows
so much design that it cannot possibly be the result of accident,
if it is found in two distinct lands. The examples quoted above are
perhaps sufficient to establish this similarity, but they are only a
fraction of those which might be adduced if the subject were carefully
followed out. It evidently was much more common in the East than we
have hitherto had reason to suspect--for this reason alone, if for no
other--that it continued to last so long. In this example from Burmah
(woodcut No. 226) we have first an external mound encircling the tope,
then the circles of rude stones replaced by a complicated rail, and
above all, in the centre, a simulated dagoba replacing the simulated
cist. These are great changes, it must be confessed, but hardly so
great as we might expect when we consider that the Senbya dagoba was
only erected fifty-five years ago, and that the interval between it and
the rude-stone monuments is consequently considerable. Another striking
instance of the modern form this primæval sepulchre assumes is found
in the celebrated tomb of Akbar the Great at Agra. There the king is
buried in a vault below the level of the ground, but his simulated
tomb is on the top of the pyramid, exposed to the air outside; and on
each stage, externally, little pavilions replace the stones which his
progenitors had previously employed for a like purpose.
[Illustration: 226. View of the Senbya Pagoda, Burmah. From a
photograph.]
These two--the holed stone and the simulated cist--are perhaps the most
direct evidences of similarity between the East and the West, but the
whole system affords innumerable points of contact, not sufficiently
distinct perhaps to quote as evidence individually, but collectively
making up such a case that it seems very difficult to refuse to believe
that both styles were the product of one kindred race of men, and who
at the time they erected them must have been more or less directly in
communication with one another.
The literary evidence is much less complete or satisfactory. So far
as I know, no paragraph has been detected in any classical authors
which would lead us to suspect any connexion at any time between India
and any country so remote from it, as France for instance, and still
less with Denmark, unless it be the Woden myth belonging to the latter
country. That, however, was either so indistinct originally, or has
been so obscured by later additions, that it is now almost impossible
to say what it is. Though so frequently insisted upon, it seems almost
impossible that by any process, the gentle ascetic Sakya Muni could
ever have become the fierce warlike Woden, and except some nominal
similarities there seems nothing to connect the two. It may be that at
some time about the Christian era, a chief of that name migrated from
the Crimean Bosphorus to the Baltic, and may have brought with him some
Asiatic practices, but the connecting link between him and India seems
wholly wanting, and not likely to be now supplied.
The one passage that seems to bear directly on the subject, strange
to say, comes this time from India itself. Among the edicts that
Asoka engraved on the rocks in various parts of India, the last or
thirteenth is to the following effect, so far as it can be made out.
It is unfortunately the nearest to the ground, and consequently in all
the published copies appears more or less injured. Two more copies of
the edicts are known to exist,--one in the Dehra Doon, the other in
Orissa: when they are copied and published, perhaps a more perfect
translation may be possible. Meanwhile, Mr. Prinsep's translation
runs thus:--"There is not in either class of the heretics of men a
procedure marked by such grace ... nor so glorious nor friendly, nor
even so extremely liberal, as Devanampiyo's (Asoka's) injunction for
the non-injury and content of living creatures.... And the Greek
king besides by whom the kings of Egypt, Ptolemaios, Antigonus and
Magas.... Both here and in foreign countries wherever they go, the
religious ordinances of Devanampiyo effect conversion. Conquest is
of every description, but the conquest that bringeth joy, springing
from pleasant emotion, becometh joy itself. The victory of virtue is
happiness. Such victory is desired in things of this world and things
of the next world."[583] In other copies of this edict the names of
Antiochus and Alexander are found, making five well known names, and
curiously enough all five are mentioned by Justin within a few lines of
one another in the last chapter of his twenty-sixth book and the first
chapter of his twenty-seventh book. There is thus no doubt who the
kings were, nor of more than a year as to the date of this edict, which
must have been within a year or so of 257 B.C.
The great interest, however, for our present purpose is that an Indian
emperor, in the middle of the third century before Christ, should be
in a condition to form an alliance with Magas of Cyrene so near the
African dolmen-field. As before mentioned (_ante_, p. 410), we are
still very deficient in our knowledge of the Megalithic remains of this
country; but we do know that they exist, and that those which have been
illustrated are of a singularly Indian type. It is also nearly certain
that many of the rock-cut chambers about his capital are monasteries or
temples, not tombs, as has always been too hastily assumed. Whether,
on further investigation, these will prove to be so essentially Indian
as they at present appear to be, remains to be seen, but meanwhile the
possibility of an alliance of this sort two or three centuries before
Christ, takes away much of the improbability that would otherwise exist
in assuming that Indian influence might have extended further westward
at some subsequent period, and that the African dolmens might be proved
to be allied to, and possibly contemporary with, those of India.
BUDDHISM IN THE WEST.
The great basis, however, on which any proof of the existence of
a connexion between the East and West must eventually rest, will
probably be found in the amount of pure Buddhism which crept into
Christianity in the early age of the Church. The subject has not yet
been fairly grappled with by any one capable of doing it justice. It
has been frequently alluded to by travellers, who have been struck with
resemblances which could hardly be accidental, and used sometimes by
scoffers in order to depreciate Christianity; but no serious historian
of the Latin Church has had sufficient knowledge of Buddhism or of its
forms to be able to appreciate correctly either the extent or the cause
of its introduction; and till some one does this, it will be treated by
the general reader as an idle speculation. Yet it probably is not too
much to assert, that at least nine-tenths of the institutions and forms
which were engrafted on pure evangelical Christianity in the middle
ages, are certainly derived from Buddhist sources.
Of these, one of the most striking is the introduction of monastic
institutions, which exercised so important an influence on the forms of
Christianity during the whole period of the middle ages. It is in vain
to look for their origin in anything that existed in Europe before the
Christian era. Nothing can be more forced than the analogies it has
been attempted to establish between the Vestal virgins and the nuns of
the middle ages, and no trace of conventual life can be found among the
semi-secular priesthood of classical times. According to the usually
received opinion, Antony (A.D. 305[584]) was the first monk,
and from him and about his time a prolific progeny are traced to the
Thebais, which is usually assumed to be the cradle of the institution.
Monastic life was, however, absolutely antithetical to the religious
institutions of the ancient Egyptians, amongst whom the king was high
priest and god, and where civil could hardly be distinguished from
religious rank. It was equally opposed to the feelings of the Arabic
or at least Semitic races, that superseded the Coptic in that country,
and could consequently hardly have existed at all, unless introduced
from some foreign source and maintained by some extraneous influence.
The Essenes are the only sect to whom in the ancient world in the
West anything like the peculiar institutions of monasticism can be
traced; but unfortunately we do not know how or when they adopted them.
Josephus represents them as only one of the three principal sects into
which the Jews in his time were divided; but the silence not only of
the Bible but of the Rabbis weakens the force of his statement, while
his unfortunate omission of the name of their Lawgiver[585] leaves us
in the dark on the most essential point. That it was not Moses, whose
name is usually interpolated, is quite certain. He never inculcated any
such doctrines, and one hardly dares to suggest the Indian name, which
would clear up the whole mystery at once. Be this as it may, the sect
only arose apparently in the time of the Maccabees, and practically
disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; all which would
accord perfectly with the hypothesis of their Indian origin, but would
hardly suffice to support the idea that they were the sect from whom,
in the fourth century, the Christian Church adopted the principles and
practices of Asceticism.
When from these sparse indications we turn to the East, we are met
by the difficulty that none of the books we possess were reduced
to writing in their present form till the time of Buddhaghosa,
A.D. 412,[586] or even later; and any one who knows what
wild imaginings can in the fertile East creep into works during the
remodellings of a thousand years, will easily understand with what
caution they must be used. Fortunately in this instance the monuments
and inscriptions come to our assistance, and we are enabled to form a
fair idea of the progress of monasticism in India from what they tell
us.
Before the first monuments, the books tell us of three great
convocations: the first held immediately on the death of the founder
of the religion, B.C. 543, at Rajagriha; the second 100 years
afterwards, at Vaisali; and the third by Asoka, 250 B.C., at
Pataliputta, or Patna. These we are told were attended by thousand and
tens of thousands of monks.[587] But Asoka's edicts give no countenance
to any such extension of the system in his day. Shortly after this,
however, the earlier caves show cells appropriated to hermits, or
even for the reunion of a limited number of monks under one roof.
These Viharas or monasteries are small at first, and insignificant as
compared with the Chaityas or church caves to which they are attached,
as at Karlee, Baja, Bedsa and elsewhere; but shortly afterwards, at
Nassick and Jooneer, in the first or second centuries they become more
important; and when we reach such a series as that at Ajunta or Baug,
for instance, we find the Vihara becoming all important, the Chaitya
sinking into comparative insignificance. This great change took place
apparently about the end of the third or beginning of the fourth
century of our era, and continued till Buddhism actually perished,
smothered under the weight of its enormously developed hierarchy some
three centuries later.
The sculptures tell the same story. There are no representations of
priests in the form we afterwards find them in at Sanchi, in the first
century of our era. Ascetics there are, dwelling in woods and lonely
places, but not congregated in monasteries, nor jointly performing
ceremonies. But at Amravati, three centuries later, we have shaven
priests in their distinctive robes, and every symptom of a well
developed system.
If this is so, it could hardly have been before the era of the Roman
Empire that these peculiar institutions penetrated to the West; nor
could they have done so during its supremacy without attracting
attention. But in the great "débacle" which followed the change of
the seat of government and the destruction of the old faith, it is
easy to see how these forms may have crept in, together with the new
Eastern faith, which an illiterate people were adopting, without much
knowing whence it came, and without being able to discriminate what was
Christian and what Buddhist in the forms or doctrines that were being
presented to them.
Among the peculiarities then introduced, one of the most remarkable
was the segregation of the clergy from the laity, and the devotion
of the former wholly to the performance of religious duties. Still
more so was their seclusion in monasteries, living a life of the most
self-denying asceticism, subsisting almost wholly on alms, and bound
by vows of poverty, chastity and temperance, to a negation of all the
ordinary enjoyments of life. That the two systems are identical no one
has doubted, and no one, indeed, can enter now a Buddhist monastery in
the East and watch the shaven priests in the yellow robes at matins, or
at vespers, issue from their cells and range themselves on either side
of a choir, on whose altar stands an image of the Queen of Heaven, or
of the three precious Buddhas, and listen to their litanies, chanted
in what to them is a dead or foreign tongue, without feeling that
he is looking in the East on what is externally the same as he had
long been familiar with in the West.[588] If he follows these monks
back to their cells and finds them governed by a mitred abbot, and
subordinated as deacons, priests, and neophytes, learns that they are
bound by vows of celibacy, live by alms, and spend their lives in a
dull routine of contemplation and formal worship, he might almost fancy
he was transported back into some Burgundian convent in the middle
ages, unless he is prepared, like Huc and Gabet, to believe that it is
a phantasm conjured up by the author of all evil for the confusion of
mankind. We know from the form and arrangement of the great Chaitya
caves, that these forms prevailed as early at least as the first
century B.C., and, as they are practised without change in the
East to the present day, it seems clear that it is thence that they
were introduced into Europe.
Canonization is another remarkable institution common to the Buddhist
and Christian Churches, and to them only. It has frequently been
attempted to draw a parallel between the demigods of Greece and Rome
and the institution of Saints in the mediæval Church; but this argument
has always failed, because in fact no two institutions could in their
origin be more essentially different. The minor gods of the heathen
pantheon, though sometimes remarkable for their prowess or virtues,
were all more or less connected by ties of blood or marriage with the
great Olympic family, and owed their rank rather to their descent than
to their merits. It is true that in later times the deification of
Roman emperors and others of that class, which the abject flattery of
a corrupt age had introduced, was a nearer approach to the practice of
Buddhism, which was then flourishing in the East, than anything before
known in the pagan world. But canonization in its purity, as practised
both in the East and West, is not to be attained through either birth
or office, but by the practice of ascetic virtues on the part of the
clergy, and by piety coupled with benefactions to the Church by those
outside its pale. In these casteless institutions any man, however
obscure his origin, by devotion to the interests of his adopted order,
and the practice of the asceticism, heightened if possible by the
endurance of self-inflicted tortures, might attain to Buddhahood or
saintship. But such a path to adoration in this world, or to worship
hereafter, was utterly unknown in Europe until it was introduced from
the East, after the Christian era.
Relic-worship is another peculiarity which the mediæval Church
certainly borrowed from the East. No tradition is more constant than
that which relates that the relics of Buddha were, after cremation,
divided into eight parts, and distributed to eight different
kingdoms, and the history of some portions of these can be traced to
comparatively modern times. Perhaps too much reliance should not be
placed on these very early traditions, as no material evidence of
them exists, nor in the often-repeated assertion that Asoka built
84,000 dagobas,[589] to receive relics. That he built several is quite
certain. The fact of the relics of two of the favourite disciples of
Buddha--Mogalana and Sariputra--and of ten of the principal dignitaries
of the Buddhist Church in the time of Asoka having been found at
Sanchi in topes certainly anterior to the Christian era,[590] is quite
sufficient for our present purpose. As is well known, the Tooth relic,
whose history can be traced back with certainty for more than fifteen
centuries, is now worshipped under British protection in Ceylon.
No such form of worship existed in classical antiquity, nor is it quite
clear how it came to be adopted by the Christian Church. Buddhism was
a reform of a material, ancestral-worshipping, body-respecting form
of religion. The sepulchral tumulus with them became in consequence a
dagoba, or relic shrine, containing a bone, or a vessel, or rag, or
something that belonged to Buddha or some of his followers; and all
the grosser superstitions of the Turanian natives, whose faith he was
trying to elevate and refine, were sublimated into something immaterial
and more pure. But Christianity never could have wanted this, and its
adoption of relic worship was either a piece of blind imitation adopted
without thinking, among other things, for which there was more excuse,
or it was one of the many instances of the toleration of foreign
elements which characterized the Christian priesthood in the early age
of the Church.
It is as little clear when this worship was introduced as why it was
done, for Christian legends in regard to relics are not more to be
depended upon than those of the Buddhists. It could not have been
common in the days of Clemens of Alexandria, or he would not have
mentioned as a wonder that the Indians worshipped a bone enclosed in a
pyramid;[591] but shortly after Constantine's time the fashion became
prevalent, and the miracles performed by the touch of relics became
one of the favourite delusions of the middle ages. If this is correct,
and we are justified in assuming that the Buddhism which we find in
mediæval Christianity was introduced after Constantine's time, we may
take it for granted that any influence which the East exercised on the
Western rude-stone monuments was also subsequent to that monarch's
reign. If this is so, a considerable portion, at least, of those found
in both countries must also belong to the dark ages that closed with
the Crusades.
It would be easy to go on multiplying instances of Eastern customs
introduced into the Western Church were this the place to do it. All
that is required here, however, is to adduce sufficient evidence to
accentuate an assertion which no one, probably, who knows anything of
the subject would be found to dispute. It is, that the mediæval Church
borrowed many of its forms from pre-existing Buddhism, and that these
were introduced not before but after the time of Constantine. If,
after having reached conviction on this point, we turn to our books to
ascertain what light they throw on the subject, we find them absolutely
silent. You may wade through all the writings of the Fathers, all the
ponderous tomes of the Bollandists, without finding a trace, or even
a hinted suspicion, that such a transference of doctrine took place.
Except from one or two passages in Clemens of Alexandria, we should
not be able to show that before the time of Constantine the nations
of the West knew even the name of Buddha,[592] much less anything
of his doctrines. While this is so it is obviously idle to ask for
written evidence with regard to the influence of either country on the
architectural style of the other. Men write volumes on volumes with
regard to doctrines and faiths, but rarely allude to anything that
concerns mere buildings; and while written history is so absolutely
silent respecting the introduction of Buddhist forms into the West, it
is in vain to hope that any allusion will be found to the influence
Eastern forms may have had on the sepulchral monuments of Northern
Africa or Europe. In this case, the "litera scripta" is not to be
depended upon, but the monuments and their inscriptions are, and it
is from them and them only, that either correct dates or reliable
materials for such an investigation can be obtained. So far as I am
capable of forming an opinion, their evidence is amply sufficient, in
the first place, to take away all _à priori_ improbability from the
assumption that there may have been a direct influence exercised by
the East on the Western rude-stone monuments. But it seems to me at
the same time sufficient to render it extremely probable that while
influencing to so great an extent the religious institutions of the
country, they should also have modified their sepulchral forms so
as fully to account for all the similarities which we find existing
between them.
It may not be possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to
explain exactly how this influence was exercised, and we must,
consequently, rest content with the fact that as Buddhism did so
influence the religion of the West in those early ages, the same agency
may equally have acted upon the architectural or sepulchral forms of
the same class in our population.
To explain this it is necessary to revert for a moment to a
proposition I have often had occasion to advance, and have not yet
seen refuted--that Buddhism is the religion of a Turanian race, using
that word, as used by its inventors, in the broadest possible sense.
The Persians say Iran and Turan, and Iran and Aniran, terms equivalent
to our Aryan and non-Aryan; and Buddhism is not and never was, but
exceptionally, the religion of the Aryan race, and is not now professed
by any Aryan people in any quarter of the globe. It is essentially the
faith of a quiescent, contemplative race, with no distinct idea of a
god external to this world, or of a future state other than through
transmigrations accomplished in this world, leading only to eternal
repose hereafter; its followers, however, still believing in the direct
influence of the temporarily-released spirits of their forefathers in
guiding and controlling the destiny of their offspring, thus leading
directly to ancestral worship. In India this primitive faith was
refined and elevated into one of the most remarkable and beneficent of
human institutions by the Aryan Sakya Muni and his Brahmin coadjutors,
and did at one time nearly obliterate the Aryan faith which it
superseded. After, however, a thousand years of apparent supremacy,
the old faith came again to the surface and Buddhism disappeared from
India, but still remains the only faith of all the Turanian nations
around it and wherever the Aryan races never seem to have settled.
If any Turanian blood remained in the veins of any of the various races
who inhabited Europe in the middle ages, it is easy to understand how
the preaching or doctrines of any Buddhist missionaries or Turanian
tribes must have struck a responsive chord in their hearts, and how
easily they would have adopted any new fashion these Easterns may have
taught. As we have had occasion to point out above, the dolmen-builders
of Europe certainly were not Aryan. Nor, if we may trust M. Bertrand
and the best French antiquaries, were they Celts; but that an old
pre-Celtic people did exist in those parts of France in which the
dolmens are generally found appears to me indisputable. Though the more
active and progressive Celts had commenced their obliteration of this
undemonstrative people at the time when written history first began in
their country, there is no reason to suppose that their blood or their
race was entirely exterminated till a very recent period, and it may
still have been numerically the prevalent ingredient in the population
between the fourth and the tenth centuries of our era.
Of course, it is not intended to assert or even to suggest that the
Western nations first adopted from the East the practice of using stone
to accentuate and adorn their sepulchral monuments. The whole evidence
of the preceding pages contradicts such an assumption. But what they
do seem to have borrowed is the use or abuse of holed stones, and the
arrangement of external dolmens on the summit of tumuli combined with
two or three circles of rude stones. These I fancy to have been among
the latest of the forms which rude-stone architecture adopted, and may
very well have been introduced in post-Constantinian times; and when we
become more familiar with the peculiarities of these monuments, both in
the East and the West, there may be other forms which we may recognize
as modern and interchangeable, while many others, such as the great
chambered tumuli and the tall solitary menhirs, seem as original and as
peculiar to the West.
Having now made the tour of the Old World, it will be convenient to
try to resume, in as few words as possible, the principal results we
have arrived at from the preceding investigation.
First, with regard to their age. It seems that the uncivilized,
ancestral-worshipping races of Europe first borrowed from the
Romans--or, if any one likes, from the Phœnicians or Greeks of
Marseilles--the idea of using stone to accentuate and adorn the
monuments of their dead. In like manner, it certainly was from the
Bactrian Greeks that the Indians first learned the use of stone as a
building material. How early the Eastern nations adopted it in its rude
form we do not know. In its polished form it was used as early as the
middle of the third century B.C., but we have no authentic instance
of the rude form till at least a century or two after Christ; but,
once introduced, its use continued to the present day. Its history
in the West seems somewhat different. The great chambered tumuli at
Gavr Innis, and others in France, as well as those at Lough Crew, in
Ireland, seem to belong to a time before the Romans occupied the states
of Western Europe; but no stone monument of this class has yet made
out its claim to an antiquity of more than two centuries, if so much,
before the Christian era. Some of those in Greece about Mycenæ, and
those at Saturnia, may be earlier, but they are as yet undescribed
scientifically, and we cannot tell. From shortly before the Christian
era, till the countries in which they are found became entirely and
essentially Christian, the use of these monuments seems to have been
continual, whenever a dolmen-building race--or, in other words, a race
with any taint of Turanian blood in their veins--continued to prevail.
This, in remote corners of the world, seems to have extended in France
and Britain down to the eighth or ninth century. In Scandinavia
it lasted down to the eleventh or twelfth, and sporadically, in
out-of-the-way and neglected districts, as late both in France and
Great Britain.
These results do not, of course, touch the age of the earthen tumuli
or barrows, for the determination of whose age no scale has yet been
invented; still less do they approach the question of the antiquity of
the Cave men or the palæolithic stone implements, the age of which we
must, for the present at least, leave wrapped in the mists of the long
prehistoric past.
Their uses seem more easily determined than their dates; with only a
few rare and easily-recognizable exceptions, all seem originally to
have been intended for sepulchral or cenotaphic purposes. Either, like
the great chambered tumuli and the dolmens, they were actually the
burying-places of the illustrious dead; or, like the greater circles
and the alignments, they marked battle-fields, and were erected in
honour of those slain there, whether their bodies were actually laid
within their precincts or not; or, like the rude stone pillars of the
Khassia hills, they were offerings to the spirits of the departed.
With the fewest possible exceptions[593] and these of the most
insignificant character, their connexion with the relics of the dead
can be proved from all having become places for ancestral worship and
having under various forms been used for commemorating or honouring
departed spirits. No single instance has been authenticated of either
circles or dolmens in any other form, except perhaps single stones,
having ever been used for the worship of Odin, or of the gods called
Mercury, Mars, Venus, or the other gods of the Druids, still less
is there any trace of the worship of the sun or moon or any of the
heavenly host; nor, I am sorry to think, can the serpent lay claim to
any temple of this class. Honour to the dead and propitiation of the
spirits of the departed seem to have been the two leading ideas that
both in the East and West gave rise to the erection of these hitherto
mysterious structures which are found numerously scattered over the
face of the Old World.
[Footnote 531: 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p.
459, fig. 968.]
[Footnote 532: 'Caves of Baja and Bedsa in Western Ghâts;'
unpublished.]
[Footnote 533: 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' quotation from Hiouen
Thsang, p. 135, and plates, _passim_.]
[Footnote 534: 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p.
649.]
[Footnote 535: 'Architecture of Ahmedabad.' 120 photographs, with
text. Murray, 1868.]
[Footnote 536: Yule, 'Mission to the Court of Ava,' p. 43, pl. ix.]
[Footnote 537: 'J. A. S. B.,' vii. p. 930.]
[Footnote 538: 'J. R. A. S.,' new series, iv. p. 88.]
[Footnote 539: 'Tods Rajastan,' i. p. 224.]
[Footnote 540: The information regarding the Khonds is principally
derived from a work entitled 'Memorials of Service,' by Major
Charteris-Macpherson (Murray, 1865), and his papers in 'J. R. A.
S.' xiii. pp. 216 _et seq._ I quote by preference from the latter,
as the more generally accessible.]
[Footnote 541: For several years past I have officially and
privately been exerting all the influence I possess to try and get
two bassi relievi that exist in these caves cast or photographed,
or at least carefully copied in some form, but hitherto in vain. In
1869 the Government sent an expedition to Cuttack with draftsmen,
photographers, &c., but they knew so little what was wanted that
they wasted their time and money in casting minarets and sculptures
of no beauty or interest, and, having earned their pay, returned
_re infecta_. I am not without hopes that something may be done
during the present cold season. When representations are obtained,
they will throw more light on the history of the Yavanas or Greeks
in that remote part of India than anything else that could be done,
and would clear up some points in the history of Indian art that
are now very obscure.]
[Footnote 542: Sterling's account of Cuttack, 'Asiatic Researches,'
xv. p. 306.]
[Footnote 543: _Loc. s. c._ p. 315.]
[Footnote 544: Tacitus' 'Germania,' 9.]
[Footnote 545: H. Walters, 1828, 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. pp.
499 _et seq._ Colonel Yule, 'Proceedings, Soc. of Antiq. Scot.'
i. p. 92. Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 276. Major Godwin
Austen, 'Journal Anthropological Institute,' vol. i. Part II.]
[Footnote 546: Schlagintweit, in 'Ausland,' No. 23, 1870, pp. 530
_et seq._]
[Footnote 547: 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. p. 502.]
[Footnote 548: Major Godwin Austen, 'Journal Anthrop. Institute,'
i. p. 127.]
[Footnote 549: 'Journal Anthrop. Inst.' i. p. 126.]
[Footnote 550: 'Mémoires sur les Contrées occidentales,' iii. p.
76.]
[Footnote 551: Colonel Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,'
vol. ii. pls. lviii. lix. lx. They have also been described by Dr.
Stevenson, 'J. R. A. S.' v. pp. 192 _et seq._ It would be extremely
interesting, in an ethnographic point of view, if some further
information could be obtained regarding these stone rows.]
[Footnote 552: 'Early Races of Scotland,' ii. 459.]
[Footnote 553: 'J. R. A. S.' xiii. p. 268.]
[Footnote 554: I quote from a paper by him, published in the
'Trans. R. Irish Academy,' xxiv. pp. 329 _et seq._ There is an
earlier paper by him in the 'J. B. B. R. A. S.' vol. iii. p. 179,
but it is superseded by the later publication.]
[Footnote 555: 'Proceedings, Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1868,' p. 152.]
[Footnote 556: 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich
volume, p. 200.]
[Footnote 557: 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich
volume, p. 245.]
[Footnote 558: 'J. R. A. S.' new series, iii. p. 143.]
[Footnote 559: 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich
volume, p. 257.]
[Footnote 560: Published on a reduced scale, 'Tree and Serpent
Worship,' p. xlvi.]
[Footnote 561: The principal sources of information on the subject
are the papers of Sir Walter Elliot and Col. Meadows Taylor, so
often referred to above. But I am also indebted to Mr. M. J.
Walhouse, M.C.S., for a great amount of valuable information on the
subject. His private letters to me are replete with details which
if he would only consent to arrange and publish would throw a flood
of light on the subject.]
[Footnote 562: Norwich volume, 'International Prehistoric
Congress,' pp. 252 _et seq._ He places the destruction of the
Karumbers as early as the seventh century, but the dates are, to
say the least, often very doubtful. When, for instance, Hiouen
Thsang visited Conjeveran in 640--the Buddhist establishment--they
were still flourishing, and no signs apparent of the storm, which
did not, I fancy, break out till at least a century after that
time. See also 'The Seven Pagodas,' by Capt. Carr, Madras, 1869, p.
127.]
[Footnote 563: Second Report by the Rev. W. Taylor, 'Madras Lit.
Jour.' vii. p. 311 _et passim_.]
[Footnote 564: Caldwell's 'Dravidian Grammar,' pp. 9 _et seq._
'The Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills,' by a German missionary (Madras,
1856)--the Rev. F. Metz, who probably knows more of their language
than any one now living. Mr. Walhouse's letters are also strong on
this point.]
[Footnote 565: See 'Rock-cut Temples,' by the Author, p. 50.]
[Footnote 566: Sir Walter Elliot, 'J. R. A. S.' iv. pp. 7 _et
seq._; and new series, i. 250.]
[Footnote 567: Sir W. Elliot, 'Journal Ethnological Soc.,' new
series, 1869, p. 110.]
[Footnote 568: Lieut. Cole, R.E., has brought home a cast of the
upper part of this pillar, which is now at the South Kensington
Museum.]
[Footnote 569: 'Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' vii. p. 629.]
[Footnote 570: The crack and bend in the upper part of the pillar
are caused by a cannon shot, the dent of which is distinctly
visible on the opposite side. I hope it was not fired by the
English, but I do not know who else would, or could, have done it.]
[Footnote 571: Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 310. Percy's
'Metallurgy: Iron and Steel,' p. 254 _et seq._ All the original
authorities will be found referred to in the last-named work.]
[Footnote 572: Josephus, 'Bell. Jud.,' v. p. 6.]
[Footnote 573: 'Journal Madras Lit. Soc.' xiv. pl. 8.]
[Footnote 574: 'J. A. S. B.' xxxvii. p. 116 _et seq._]
[Footnote 575: An elaborate paper by the Rev. Mr. Joyce, in the
'Archæological Journal,' 108, 1870, shows, I think clearly, that
these crosses could not be earlier than 470 A.D.--all the
crosses he quotes being of the usual Greek form, though possessing
one longer limb. Indeed, I do not myself know of any crosses like
those at Nirmul earlier than the 10th or 11th century; but, as my
knowledge of the subject is not profound, I have allowed the widest
possible margin in the text. I cannot prove it, but my impression
is, that they belong to the 11th or 12th century.]
[Footnote 576: As it is wholly beside the object of this work I
have not attempted to go into the history of the Siganfu Tables,
nor the records of the early churches in the East. If the reader
cares to know more, he will find the subject fully and clearly
discussed in Col. Yule's 'Cathay, and the Way Thither,' published
by the Hakluyt Society, 1866. It is the last work on the subject,
and contains references to all the earlier ones.]
[Footnote 577: 'J. R. A. S.,' xiii. 164 _et seq._]
[Footnote 578: Wilson's 'Ariana Antiqua,' Introduction _passim_.
Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' &c., _passim_.]
[Footnote 579: Hiouen Thsang, 'Vie et Voyages,' p. 77.]
[Footnote 580: 'Madras Journal of Lit. and Science,' xiii. pl. 14.]
[Footnote 581: 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' p. 82, woodcut 8.]
[Footnote 582: 'Foe Koué Ki,' p. 335.]
[Footnote 583: 'J.R.A.S.' xii. p. 233. 'J.B.A.S.' vii. p. 261 _et
seq._]
[Footnote 584: Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall,' iv. p. 392, where the
original authorities are found.]
[Footnote 585: Josephus, 'B. J.,' II. viii. p. 9.]
[Footnote 586: "The prestige of such a witness as Buddhaghosa soon
dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and councils 800
years before his time are, in truth, worth no more than the stories
told of Arthur, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the accounts we read in
Livy of the early history of Rome"--_Chips from a German Workshop_,
i. p. 198. As a mere linguist, and dependent wholly on books, Max
Müller was perfectly justified in making this statement, while his
ignorance of everything connected with the archæology or art of
India, prevented his perceiving how these wild statements could be
verified or controlled. Till he learns that there are other means
of investigation than mere words his statements on these subjects
are untrustworthy, and, in many cases, absolutely worthless.]
[Footnote 587: Turnour's 'Mahawanso,' 12 _et seq._ 'J. A. S. B.,'
vii. _passim_.]
[Footnote 588: Huc and Gabet, in their 'Travels in Thibet,' give
a most amusing account of their bewilderment on observing there
these things:--"La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique, la chape ou
pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou lorsqu'ils font
quelque cérémonie hors du temple; l'office des deux chœurs, la
psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinque chaines,
et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer à volonté; les bénédictions
données par les Lamas, en étendant la main droite sur la tête des
fidèles; le chapelet, le célibat ecclesiastique, les retraites
spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeûnes, les processions,
les litanies, l'eau bénite: voilà autant des rapports que les
Bouddhistes ont avec nous."--Vol. ii. p. 110.]
[Footnote 589: 'Mahavanso,' p. 26.]
[Footnote 590: Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' p. 289 _et seq._]
[Footnote 591: Clemens, i. 194. Oxford, 1715.]
[Footnote 592: Clemens, i. 132. Translation by Potter, _ut sup._ p.
504.]
[Footnote 593: The accidental resemblance of the microlithic
temples of the Deccan mentioned above (p. 467) can hardly be quoted
as an exception. They are said to be dedicated to Vetal, but it is
not clear that the stones of the circle do not represent dead, as
they certainly do absent persons, and the sacrifice, after all,
is offered up to their departed spirits; it being a form of the
present day we do not know how much its spirit may not be changed
from the ancient rite which it was originally intended to typify.]