108 



The Antiquities of the 



[No. 3^, 



These Pandavers were probably Buddhists or Jains. 



Mr. Woodham, speaking of the Pandoo-koolies, states, that a being 

 called Pandoo 'and his children are supposed to have been the au- 

 thors of those edifices. The literaV signification of the term Pandy- 

 kooly appears to be, an ancient grave. The word Pandi is used by 

 the Hindoos to express any thing ancient, thus Pandi-rajah means 

 ancient king, Pandi-kooly ancient grave and so forth. 



2. The fashion of the ornamented urns found in the ancient cairns 

 on the Neilgherries approximates to the style used in the religious 

 edifices of the Buddhists. 



3. Numerous figures of horsemen armed with swords and shields 

 are constantly dug up from the cairns, occasionally two human 

 figures bestriding one horse, and a human figure seated with his legs 

 crossed beneath him, are hkewise found. It will be recollected that 

 similar figures are common in the architecture and paintings of the 

 Buddhists. 



4. The representation of a chuttar or umbrella in pottery occurs 

 in the cairns as a handle to the urns, and it is a very frequent sub- 

 ject in the Buddhist paintings. 



5. Figures riding on elephants are found in the cairns. 



6. Animals of the most grotesque and monstrous forms, with 

 obscene images of human beings, are common to the Buddhist temples 

 and to the Neilgherry cairns. 



The nakedness and colossal stature of many of the human images 

 compared with their horses and other animals, found in the cairns, 

 suggests the recollection of the Gomuta of the Jains, or Gotama. 



Reviewing these and the former arguments, barren when compared 

 with those which support my view of the ancient cairns having be- 

 longed to the early Thautawars, I am fain to embrace the latter 

 theory, and ascribe the ancient and modern cairns to the same 

 people. But it may now be necessary to account for the difference 

 prevaihng between the highly ornamented urns in the former and the 

 jJain rude vessels in the latter. Time, the exterminating irruptions 

 of the Polygars amongst the Thautawars, the migratory habits of this 

 people, and their reduced condition from a great race to an insignifi- 

 cant remnant, have contributed to banish from amongst them all 

 recollections of the arts of their forefathers. The fashion leaning to 

 the Buddhist style of art maintained in the urns and their lids, may 

 have been acquired by the Thautawar constructors of the " early" 



