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
