In the Alford district of Aberdeenshire are many cairns of enormous size. Some people think they have been beacons to give warning in time of danger ; but many of them are situated in low places, and they are supposed to be tombs of some great men. It is a common saying among the people of that country to this day, when any person makes them a gift, God I wat, gin I live ahint you, I'se add a stane to your cairn.' The old Celtic is, Curri mi clach er do cairn,"I will add a stone to your cairn ; ' i.e. I will do homage to your memory when you are dead. And to this day many old people never pass by any of these cairns without throwing a stone to it.
The Gond races in the Vindhya place great stones over the graves. Doorgawati, queen regent of Gurha Mundela, was killed in action against the troops of Akbar, under Asaf Khan, as an inscription of her family asserts (As. lies. xv. p. 437). She was interred at the place where she fell (Ben. As. Soc. Journal, vi. 628), and to this day the passing stranger places, as a votive offering, one of the fairest he can find of those beautiful specimens of white crystal in which the hills in this quarter abound. Two rocks lie by her side, which are supposed by the people to be her drums converted into stone; and strange stories are told of their being still occasionally heard to sound in the still ness of the night by the people of the nearest villages. The very ancient custom of casting a stone upon untimely graves is still observed throughout Spain, accompanied by a silent prayer for the dead.
In the Upper Godavery, British side, and Kistna district south of Jaggiapetta, tombs and cairns aro found in groups, particularly in the Kistn a district, where there aro hundreds on one hill alone,—four stone slabs on edge, and slab at bottom, and ono on top ; then round the tomb a ring of small stones, some 12 feet in diameter, and small stones within that heaped over the grave. The grave is sunk from 2 to 4 feet in the ground, according to the breadth of the side slabs. The sizes of the graves are from 1 foot 6 inches long by 1 foot broad, to 6 feet long by 2 feet broad. In the Kistna district the slabs are limestone ; in the Upper Godavery, trap, hypogene rock and sandstone. In several of these graves has been found a skeleton. The body had been laid on the right side, head resting on right arm, head always north, feet south. The bones crumbled almost at a touch. The size of the upper slabs on the tombs vary in size from 4 feet by 3 feet to 8 feet by 6 feet ; some of the smaller tombs have no slabs on them on top, but only small stones piled up as a cairn.
In the Upper Godavery, also, are tombs without cairns, no slabs at bottom, only four forming the sides. They are generally 4 feet by 3 feet square ; some immense slabs on top measured 14 by 5 feet. The graves are filled up with small earthen pots, filled with burnt bones and clay. Beads, apparently made of ivory, and some small glass ones of red and green colour, in the pot that contains the charred remains of the skull. There is a splendid tomb of sandstone on the Nizain's side of the river opposite Lingala; the slab on top is 9 feet square, the tomb surrounded with eight rings of stone (sunk in the ground) some 7 feet in diameter ; it is evidently a chief's grave. In
another grave, with smaller slabs and fewer rings round, were the usual pots with bones and beads ; the rings contained a skeleton with feet in towards the tomb, the skull placed between the knees. These were the skeletons of slaves that had been sacrificed on the death of a chief, number accord ing to rank. Herodotus describes this ceremony. Mr. Rivett Carnae, in the beginning of 1847, brought to notice the existence of barrows, a little further northward, at the village of Junapani, near Nagpur, in which were found articles of pottery, spear and arrow heads, battleaxes, a horse snaffle bit, stirrup-irons, and a small iron model of a bow and arrow.
In the Bengal Asiatic Journal, xiii. p. 618, for 1844, is Colonel Yule's description of the Khassya people of East Bengal, an ludo-Chinese race, who keep cattle but drink no milk, and the sister's son inherits property and rank. They habitually erect dolmens, menhirs, cists, and cromlechs, almost as gigantic in their proportions, and very similar in appearance and construction, to the so called Druidical remains of western Europe. The undulatory eminences of the country, some 4000 feet to 6000 feet above the level of the sea, are dotted with groups of huge unpolished squared pillars and tabular slabs, supported on three or four rude piers. In one spot, buried in a sand grove, were found a nearly complete circle of menhir, the tallest of which was 30 feet out of the ground, 6 feet broad, and 2 feet 8 inches thick ; and in front of each was a dolmen or cromlech of proportionately gigantic pieces of rock, while the largest slab hitherto measured is 32 feet high, 15 feet broad, and 2 feet thick. Several had been very recently erected. The method of obtaining the blocks, is by cutting grooves, along which fires are lighted, and into which, when heated, cold water is run, which causes the rock to fissure along the groove. The lever and rope are the only mechanical aids used in trans') irting and erecting the blocks. The objects of their erection are various, — sepulture, marking spots where public events had occurred, etc. The Khassya word for a stone, man,' as commonly occurs in the names of their villages and places, as that of man, maen, and men does in those of Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, etc. Thus Mausmai signified in Khassya the stone of oath ; Mauloo, the stone of salt; Meuflong, the grassy stone, etc.; just as in Wales, Penmaen Mawr signifies the hill of the big stone ; and in Brittany a menhir is a standing, and a dolmen a table stone, etc. A cairn of con siderable size, on the roadside at the top of the Ajunta ghat, seems to have been a thankoffering for the ascent of the ghat. We added, like the rest of our camp,• one stone to the heap.—Ras Mala, Hindoo Annals, ii. p. 387 ; Dr. Pritchard, Rep. Brit. Ass. 1847, p. 236; Colanel Meadows Taylor in J. E. S'oc.1869; Dr. Caldwell's Grammar; As. Res. v. xv. ; Capts. Harkness and Congrere in M.L.S.J. ; Captain Yule; Beng. As. Soc. Journ. xiii. p. 619. See Cheda ; Cromlech ; Ghorband; Tsalas