OLD GRAVES IN THE COIMBA.TOEE DISTRICT. 17 
eastern wall. The ryots say this was to keep out the 
South-West monsoon which was more violent in the good 
old days than now but I think this is little more than the 
Groundens' notion of a joke. Another ryot hazarded an 
opinion that they built their houses of stone because there 
was so much lightning that thatch was too liable to catch 
fire. Two arguments against them being houses, seem 
unanswerable. If they could make such excellent pottery^ 
they would be able to make more satisfactory houses to 
live in, and if they lived in these stone graves and used 
their pottery, they would not hide it in an inaccessible 
place between 4 stone slabs. There was no means of get- 
ting at the buried pottery without breaking up the stones 
which covered it. On the other band, it is very curious 
that they should have — as in grave No. 4 — left a passage 
from the one partition to the other, and that in all the 
graves there should be a small door as it were in the 
eastern wall. 
The expense of making these structures must have been 
great and it seems to me that they are probably the graves 
of the chiefs of some prehistoric people. The pots were 
probably buried that they might be of service to the de- 
ceased in his happy hunting grounds — a practice and a 
belief which I think obtained among the Maoris of New 
Zealand. The reason for the existence of the door-ways 
however is still not clear. They are too small to admit 
of the deceased being buried through them with any 
decency. He must have been bundled in head first. I 
should think, if they are graves, that the body would 
be interred before the top slab was laid on. The holes 
may have been left from a belief that he would pass in 
and out 1 hereby after death, and the hole in the parti- 
tion in the grave No. 4, from a belief if one person were 
buried in each partition they might like to communicate 
together. In that case however it would be easier, one 
