VOL. XV. (2) RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF INDIA 129 
The problem of Stone Monuments in India is therefore 
quite different from that which concerns the archeologists 
of Europe. To the west we have a date which we can 
approximately fix, after which we are certain that no 
monuments of the kind were constructed. In India 
monuments of this class are being made under our very 
eyes. We have always to speculate whether a particular 
example is old or new. This, of course, is particularly 
difficult when we have no architectural style to guide 
us, and where the evidence of decoration is hard to 
interpret. 
Hence we may safely infer that the monuments of 
South India are of very differing ages. Some, for instance, 
contain punch-marked coins, which cannot be earlier than 
600 B.C., and may be many centuries later. In most 
of them, again, iron implements are found associated with 
wheel-made pottery, ornaments of copper, bronze, gold, 
and silver, many of which were possibly imported from 
Babylonia. The possibility that in some instances this 
admixture may result from secondary interments must not 
be overlooked. At the same time, the age of some 
examples must be very great. The Iron Age pottery and 
implements, of which illustrations will be found in Mr 
Bruce Foote’s catalogue, and in the records of excavations 
by Mr Breeks, represent a very archaic period of art 
and industry. The latter writer’ points out some resem- 
blances and differences between the “finds” in India and 
Europe. In Europe we find with the interments cinerary 
urns, food-vessels, drinking cups, and the so-called “ In- 
cense-cups,” found inside the cinerary urns, placed on 
or among the calcined bones, and frequently themselves 
also filled with burnt bones. Vessels of the last kind 
in India are seldom of clay, almost always of bronze, and 
here the food-vessels are replaced by figured pots. It is 
I Op. cit., 95- 
