236 



MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 



CHAP. X. 



Antiquities. 



earthenware chatty or pot. The swords, daggers, spear-heads, 

 and sickles are identical and do not belong to another era in art. . 

 The same may be said of the pottery, which is very plentiful. 

 Mr. Breeks sums up thus :— 



"The general features of the cairns and barrows vary very little. 

 Above and beneath the slabs, which in a great majority of cases lie 

 north-east and south-west exactly as if they had been placed by 

 compass, and round the circle near the surface, lie the rough pots, 

 large deep narrow vessels, pointed at the bottom so that they cannot 

 stand upright, with rough figures of men and animals on the lid, and 

 empty or containing only earth, as far as their almost invariably broken 

 state allows one to judge. The number of these is surprising. 

 Baskets full of heads and horns of buffaloes and other figures may be 

 carried away from some cairns ; but in most cases they lie so near the 

 surface penetrated by the roots of trees and bushes that nothing can 

 be recovered. Below at depths varying from one to four feet are the 

 cinerary urns, superior in quality and make. 



There does not seem to be any rule as to the arrangement of the 

 interments. Sometimes the bones are at the bottom of the urn, some- 

 times in a bronze vase contained in it, sometimes under the inverted 

 bronze. Often the bronze is not in or near the urn. Some of the 

 urns do not contain bones but only implements and ornaments, 

 and some only earth. Sometimes the number of interments corre- 

 sponds with that of the slabs, but this does not occur often enough 

 to prove design." ^ 



^S:-^- 



BELL IVIETAL VESSELS 



— compartd 

 with Euro- 

 peau tumuli. 



In outward appearance the cairns and ban*ows of the Nilagiris 

 differ very slightly from those in Europe ; and their contents, as 

 has been said before, exhibit even a more striking similarity. 

 Each of the articles in the following list is found in the cairns 

 of both countries. 



' No very large urns, measnring as much as 4 feet in diameter, such as are 

 found in Tinnevelly, have ever been found in the Nilagixia. 



