246 The Amorpholithic Monuments of Brittany. [April, 



each stone, was a large spot of red paint, two-thirds of which 

 from the centre were blackened over. Dr. Hooker, too, 

 remarks that among the Khasias " funeral ceremonies are 

 the only ones of any importance, and they are often con- 

 ducted with barbaric pomp and expense ; and rude stones 

 of gigantic proportions are erected as monuments, singly or 

 in rows, or supporting one another like those of Stonehenge, 

 which they rival in proportions." Major Godwin Austen 

 describes some trilithons of the Khasias of immense size. 

 The great stone of one of these monuments weighed 23 tons 

 iS cwt., and another is described as measuring 30 ft. by 13 ft. 

 and 1 ft. 4 in. in thickness, and supported on massive mono- 

 liths. Mr. W. F. Holland also describes circles of massive 

 stones as existing in the Peninsula of Sinai. 



Mr. Fergusson has well shown how in India the tumulus 

 has developed into the tope, and the tope into the temple. 

 It is almost to be wondered at that he did not notice the ex- 

 traordinary analogy between the groups, rows, and avenues 

 of unhewn stones, and those thousand-pillared chaories and 

 choultries of the Southern Hindu temple-builders whose most 

 important application is their use as nuptial halls, in which 

 the annual mysteries sacred to the union of the male and 

 female divinities are celebrated. Their other uses are, accord- 

 ing to Fergusson, in his " Handbook of Architecture/' most 

 various — serving as porches to temples, as halls of ceremony, 

 cloisters — where the dancing girls dance and sing — or as 

 swinging-porches for the gods, who appear to have been 

 pleased with such innocent amusement. At Tinnevelly, for 

 instance, the great pillared hall has 100 columns in its 

 length by ten in width, so that it would have 1000 pillars, 

 were not twenty-four omitted to make way for a small 

 temple. 



At Chillumbrum, the hall is twenty-four^ pillars wide by 

 forty-one in length, which, adding the sixteen of the porch, 

 would make up the number ; but some are omitted in the 

 centre, to make space for ceremonies, so that the actual 

 number is only 930. 



At Seringham the hall is of about the same extent, and 

 several other temples have halls, the number of whose pillars 

 varies from 600 to 1000. In most instances no two pillars 

 are exactly alike. 



The temple of Tiruvalur measures externally 945 ft. by 

 701 ft. In the outer court, and towards the principal en- 

 trance, is the great choultry, intended apparently to have had 

 1000 columns, being sixteen pillars wide by forty-three in 

 depth, one half, however, of them support no roof, so that the 



