' Neglected hair shall now luxurious grow, • And by its length their bitter passion show.' In Luristan, the female relatives, on the death of their male relatives, cut off their hair, and hang the locks around the tomb. The young women and young men of the island of Delos cut off a lock of hair before marriage, and place it near the tomb of the virgins from the Hyper boreans.
Barrows or mounds of earth have been largely used by the nations of Central Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean, both in ancient times and now. The king of Ai, slain by Joshua (Josh. vii. 26, viii. 29), was placed at the entrance of the city, and over his body was raised a great heap of stones. Herodotus mentions that the barrow of Alyattes, king of Lydia, was 1300 feet broad, and nearly a mile in circumfer ence, and it has been identified by modern tra vellers. Barrows were the favourite memorial of the Teutonic race, some of them very large ; but the Saxons used also cists or stone coffins. The custom of raising tumuli over the remains of the mighty dead, seems to have been prevalent in the Central Asiatic region from the most ancient times and been taken into Scandinavia. Ezekiel, xxxii. 27, describes the practice of slaying persons and interring them with their dead chief. Hero dotus also describes the harrcw burial of the Scythians';. and to the pieSent day, in the region of the Kar Karelia, and in many other parts of the steppe occupied by the Kirghiz, are to be seen numerous tumuli of great size. Herodotus tells us that when a king died, his corpse, embalmed and covered with wax, was conveyed in a chariot in solemn state to the place of sepulture ; a large quadrangular pit was dug ; in this they placed the royal corpse on a mattress of straw ; on each side of this they planted spears, and covered it with wood, and roofed it over with hurdles of willow. In the remaining part of the pit they interred one of the late king's women, strangled for the pur pose, together with his cupbearer, his cook, his groom, his minister, his courier, his horses, as well as some articles of every kind, including several goblets of gold, that he might be sup posed to need in his journey to the other world. This done, the people eagerly contended with each other in the work of heaping over the whole a mound of earth as vast as possible. The pro ceedings did not here terminate ; for the year following, fifty of the late king's confidential attendants, and fifty of his horses, were slain, and placed, the men on the horses, around his sepul chre.—/Ilelp. 71, 72. When Chengiz Khan died, his remains were covered with a lofty mound, and extensive forests were planted to exclude the footsteps of man. Colonel Tod tells us that the tumulus, the cairn, or the pillar, are still raised over the Rajput who falls in battle ; and through out Rajwara sacrificial monuments are found, on which are seen, carved in relief, the warrior on his steed, armed at all points ; his faithful wife (sati) beside him, denoting a sacrifice ; and the sun and moon on either side, emblematic of never dying fame.—Tod's Rajasthan, i. p. 74. In Sau rashtra, also amidst the Cathi, Comani, Balla, and others of Scythie descent, numbers of palia or joojar (sacrificial pillars) are conspicuous under the walls of every town, in lines, irregular groups, and circles. On each is displayed in rude relief the warrior, with the manner of his death, lance in hand, generally on horseback, though some times in his car ; and on the coast the pirates of Budha are depicted boarding from the shrouds.
In the Panjab, near Bamian, in Afghanistan, and near Kabul, the sepulchral monuments re maining of ancient times are topes. They consist of a mound, on which is erected a cupola, sup ported by walls of masonry, more or less in a Grecian style of architecture. One near Manik yala is SO feet high and 320 feet in circumference. In its centre were found vessels of gold, silver, and copper, with coins of Rome and the Bactrian Greeks. In a chamber 60 feet deep was a copper box containing animal remains. It is one of many topes or stupas.
Many cairns are found in different parts of Southern India, and, prior to the stupas or topes, this seems to have been a common mode of covering the dead. Indeed, as Colonel Cunning ham remarks, the tope is only a cairn regularly built. On the Neilgherry hills are found remains of cairns, cromlechs, kistvaens, and circles of up right loose stones, which are nearly identical with those found in Europe in the ancient seats of the Celts. In these cairns are found vases, cinerary urns, and other vessels of glazed pottery, which sometimes contain human bones, more or less charred, and mixed with ashes ; sometimes a little animal charcoal alone. They are met with in various districts in the Presidency of Bombay, in almost every part of the Dekhan and peninsular India, from Nagpur to Madura, in immense numbers on the Animally hills, a range on the south side of the great Coin batore gap, which forms the commence ment and northern face of the Southern Ghats, those on the Animally being of a more advanced order and a better condition than the Neilgherry tombs. Similar remains are found in Circassia and Russia, and eircles of stones surrounding ancient graves are found on the south Arabian coast and in the Somali country in Africa. Major Congreve directed much attention to those on the Neilgherry Hills ; and Captain Meadows Taylor discovered and examined a large number of these remains at Rajan Kooloor, in Sorapur, and also at Siwarji, near Firozabad, on the Bhima, and devoted much attention to the comparison of them with similar remains found in England. He calls them Scytho-Celtic or Scytho-Druidical. Neither the hill people, the Toda and Knrubar, nor any Hindu, knows anything about the race to which these sepulchral remains belonged ; and neither in Sanskrit. literature nor in that of the Dravidian languages is there any tradition on the subject. The Tamil people generally call these cairns Pandu-kuri. hurl means a pit or grave, and Pandu may refer to the Pandu or Pandava brothers, to whom so much of Hindu mythology relates. The race who raised these cairns were probably dwellers in the country prior to the advent of the present Dravidian occupants, and were expelled by or ultimately became absorbed in the latter ; or they may have been a nomade shepherd race, who had wandered into India after it was peopled and settled, and then wandered out again, or became absorbed amongst the people of the country. But the remarkable fact connected with the people whose religious rites and usages of sepulture gave rise to these cairns, is that they have everywhere disappeared from Southern India, and not even a tradition of their existence sur vives.