VOL. Xv. (2) RUDE STONE MONUMENTS OF INDIA 145 
I have thus endeavoured to sketch in its main outlines 
the tangled story of the Rude Stone Monuments of India. 
It will no doubt be disappointing to you to find that the 
Indian evidence throws little light on the age of the 
analogous monuments in Europe. But it is at least a 
warning against any attempt to make the evidence support 
any very definite conclusion. Where the evidence from 
India is really of value is, I think, that it helps us to work 
out the embryology and evolution of Rude Stone Monu- 
ments as a class. We see the series starting with the 
tumulus erected to restrain the ghost, and passing on 
to the dolmen and kistvaen, which attempt at the same 
time to provide for it the comfort which it enjoyed 
on earth; the circle marking the sanctity of the place 
of interment, or acting as a “ ghost-hedge,” originally part 
of the tumulus, and afterwards gradually isolated from it ; 
the stone avenue evolved from the stone entrance of the 
underground tomb, and the trilithon’ a survival of its gate- 
way ; the menhir, an abode for the restless spirit, gradually 
becoming a mere memorial. All this may be pure guess- 
work, and may, as our knowledge increases, be replaced 
by some sounder induction from the facts patiently 
accumulated by the digger. 
_ But, so far as it goes, it is of service in co-ordinating the 
great series of stone monuments with the cult of the dead 
as we find it among savages of our time; and it focusses 
our attention on the essential features of the problem, 
which we must solve before we begin to understand the 
origin and meaning of what, in Europe at least, are relics 
of a long-forgotten past. 
