Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/511

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Chap. XIII.
AGE OF STONE MONUMENTS.
485

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.

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