228

THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.

denotes anything connected with the Pândus, or Pāndava brothers, to whom all over India

ancient mysterious structures are generally attributed. To call anything ‘a work of the Pändus' is equivalent to terming it ‘Cyclopean'

[AUGUST, 1873.

some of them are ornamented with transverse

lines and highly polished. The people were acquainted with the value and use of metals. The small swords are elegantly designed and well wrought. And so are the knives, razors, and gold

in Greece, ‘a work of the Picts' in Scotland,

and bronze ornaments found in tumuli on the

“or a work of Nimrod' in Asiatic Turkey; and it means only that the structure to which the name is applied was erected in some remote age, by a people of whom nothing is now known. When the Tamil people are asked by whom were these Pându-kuris built and used, they sometimes reply, “by the people who lived here long ago;' but they are unable to tell whether those people were their own ancestors or a foreign race, and also why and when these

Nilgiri Hills. They made and wore necklaces and bracelets of precious stones ornamented with what appears to be oxide of tin. The most recent tumuli contain rude sculptures and inscriptions, which show that the people were acquainted with reading and writing. The great care and trouble with which the tumuli were prepared as receptacles for the dead, manifest a tenderness of feeling and re verence for the departed which can only be expected in an intelligent and civilized people. Reverence for the dead can only arise from a strong manly affection for the living, which reverence and affection diminish in intensity as people descend in the scale of civilization, till they become almost extinct in the savage.

kuris ceased to be used.

The answer which is

sometimes given is that the people who built the cairns were a race of dwarfs who lived

long ago, and who were only a span or a cubit high, but were possessed of the strength of giants.” The almost total absence of traditional know

ledge respecting the origin and use of the tumuli is a strong presumptive evidence that they can not be later, but may be much older, than the time fixed above.

IV. The bones found in the tumuli prove beyond a doubt that the people buried in them were neither dwarfs nor giants, but men of ordinary stature. And the large stone slabs lining the interior and placed on the top of the tumuli, which in most cases must have been cut from the solid rock and carried from some

distance, prove that the people physically were equal to the present race of men. The objects found in the tumuli represent the people in a comparatively advanced state of civilization. They required and made earthen vessels for culinary and domestic purposes. And those vessels show considerable ingenuity in the art of pottery. They are not only all tastefully designed and well baked in fire, but

Whatever the religious tenets of the people were, it is pretty certain that they firmly believed that human existence is not bounded

by the tomb; for no reasonable cause can be assigned for the practice of depositing various objects with the dead but a firm belief in a future state, where they supposed that such objects would be required. Their conception of the future world was cast in the mould of the

present; and hence they believed that whatever is necessary, useful, and ornamental in this world would be equally so in the next—the warrior would require his sword, the husband

man his agricultural implements, and the lady her ornaments. This conception of the future is neither the transmigration of the Brahmans nor the nirvâna of the Buddhists, and hence forms another link in the chain of evidence that

the people who used the tumuli were neither the one nor the other, but anterior to both.* Salem, November 20th, 1872.

• Possibly co-ordinate with both : for, as Mr. Fergusson

rites and follow the customs of their forefathers as if the

Toda, and

stranger had never come among them.” Rude Stone Monu ments, p. 459. See also ante, p. 10,—ED.

remarks, “The Bhill, the Kol, the Gond, the

other tribes remain as they were, and practise their own