1879.] in Central India. 3 
barrows. Further south again, at a distance of about half a mile, on the 
other side of the village, is a third group. The position is somewhat low 
and damp, the ground sloping towards the small stream which runs past 
the village of Junapani. The remains discovered by Mr. Hanna were dug 
out from the barrows of this group, and were found in a less perfect state 
of preservation than the iron implements from the tumuli situated further 
up on higher ground on the hill side. A fourth and still smaller group, 
situated further north, was examined by Mr. Henry Dangerfield. For several 
miles round, similar collections of barrows, which have not yet been noted or 
explored, are to be seen festooning with their dark funereal boulders the 
slopes of the low trap hii!s which extend far south towards the Wurdah river. 
A rough plan of the Junapani circles accompanies this paper; see 
Plate I. 
In all these groups the tumuli are of the same type, consisting of circular 
mounds of earth of various sizes, surrounded by single and, in some instances, 
by double rows of trap boulders, selected from the masses with which the 
hill-side is strewn and the presence of which in great numbers, ready to hand, 
doubtless suggested the locality as a burial-place to the tribes so many of 
whose members lie here entombed. ‘The diameter of the circles varies from 
20 feet to 56 feet, the tomb being perhaps of large or inferior dimensions 
according to the consideration of the person buried. No barrow of the 
groups as yet examined by me exceeds 56 feet in diameter; and 56 feet 
seems to have been a favourite size, as each group contains several tumuli 
of exactly these dimensions. 
The trying climate of Central India, with its prolonged scorching heat, 
followed by drenching rain, so destructive to every sort of masonry build- 
ing, has told with great severity upon even these solid masses of trap rock. 
They are all more or less wrinkled by age, and in some cases the stone has 
been split and its outer coating stripped off by the action of heat and 
damp, and it is doubtful whether the boulders that have thus suffered now 
retain their original form. There is thus some difficulty in determining 
whether they have been artificially shaped. It would appear from the 
resemblance borne by most of the blocks, ranged round the tumuli, to the 
still undisturbed masses with which nature has strewn the hill side, that, in 
most cases, the stones were not dressed, but that boulders of about the same 
size, bearing the nearest resemblance to oblong cubes, were chosen from 
_ the masses on the hill side and rolled down to the site of the tumulus, and 
then ranged side by side in their natural state round the circular mound of 
earth raised over the grave. Lach circle, however, generally contains two 
or three stones, larger than their neighbours, which from the comparative 
regularity of shape would appear to have been artificially dressed. It is on 
these selected stones that the “cup-marks,” resembling those found on 
x 
A 
