teh ee ee SP 
VOL. XV. (2) RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF INDIA 143 
magnitude of the monument largely depends on the 
‘amount of beer which the relations of the deceased are 
willing to provide. The stone is dragged to the site on a 
low wheeled truck provided with bamboo cables, to which 
numbers of men are harnessed. We may compare this 
with the method represented in the Egyptian tomb frescoes 
of the process by which the great statues and obelisks 
were conveyed. A hole is then dug with three vertical and 
one sloping side. Into this the end of the stone is 
slipped, and it is then hauled into an upright position by 
ropes. Prof. Gowland, from his excavations at Stonehenge, 
proved that the old British method was the same as this. 
That the Khasi method is effective is shown by the size of 
the stones which they erect in this way. Major Godwin- 
Austen’ estimates the weight of one of their largest slabs 
at 21 tons. The stones of one monument, a trilithon, 
alone weighed 80 tons, and the highest individual stone 
seen by him was 1834 feet high. 
Another suggestive fact is that the Khasi monuments 
are built up gradually, and the work often extends over a 
series of years. This curiously corroborates the conclu- 
sions of Prof. Flinders Petrie, who, on purely metrological 
data, concluded that Stonehenge was constructed in the 
same way. 
The most modern development of the menhir is found 
in the comparatively recent memorial stones and the 
Hindu Chhatris. The former is in the nature of our 
sepulchral monuments, and is intended to commemorate 
the death of some person of eminence, or of one who lost 
his life in some unusual or tragical way. In South India 
such monuments are known as Virgal or Virakal, “ hero- 
stone.” In one, described by Sir W. Elliot, the monument 
was erected to commemorate the death of a man killed by 
a tiger, and it attests that his wives committed suttee.” In 
1 “ Journal Anthropological Institute,” i., 127. 
2 Breeks, Of. cit., 102. 
