OTHER ANTIQUITIES. 



163 



The natives call them as usual Panducoolies, and they are 

 clearly the same as those from which has originated the story 

 of the Jains having built stone-houses to escape the vengeance 

 of Siva, who, however, says tradition, defeated the precaution 

 by discharging a shower of fire and mud from the skies, 

 which overwhelmed the buildings and their occupants. The 

 back stone of the "house of a hero " ** near the village probably 

 belonged to the same people who constructed the group of 

 cromlechs. The rude figures sculptured on them are apparelled 

 and armed in the manner we find prevailing amongst the 

 earliest tribes of which we have any knowledge. I refer the 

 curious reader to the sketch and my account of the " Closed 

 Cromlechs " on the Nilgiris. The Kakoon told me he 

 was once present at the opening of a barrow in the Chingleput 

 District, on which occasion a very large and thick earthenware 

 globular vessel was found, which contained the remains of a 

 human skeleton supposed to have been buried in it in a sitting 

 posture. I have elsewhere observed that skeletons in the same 

 attitude have been found in the barrows of Europe and 

 North America ; and the Buddhists of Tibet inter the remains 

 of a Llama in nearly the same attitude under a shrine. 



Usur. — Among the antiquities at this place the pagoda is 

 the most conspicuous ; it is dedicated to Siva and said to have 

 been built by Krishna Grandharva Eaju. 



As you ascend the stone steps up the side of the hill on the 

 summit of which the sacred edifice stands, you tread on many 

 ancient inscriptions and passing through the chief gate step 

 over effigies of benefactors to the pagoda cut in the stone 

 pavement. The posture of these figures clad in mail lying 

 on their backs with their hands clasped upon their breasts, 

 forcibly brings to mind the brass effigies of knights on the 

 pavements of our English churches and abbeys. The unfinished 



A name applied by the natives in most cases to the sculptured cromlechs. 



