Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.11

c9.11

1. *Dolmenoid cists*, a phrase here limited to cists built of rough granite blocks, now above ground, within a circle of similar blocks which enclose an area from 20 to 140 feet in diameter. The uprights, four or more in number, are (or were) crowned by a massive single or double capstone, which may be either covered by a low cairn, or flush with a low cairn, or emergent from the traces of a denuded cairn. The eastern upright is occasionally pierced with a 'port-hole', and the eastern end may be approached by a short blocked passage. In the Chingleput (Madras) region, where these cists are best known, they are liable to include one or more terracotta legged sarcophagi (sometimes as many as five) with pots and iron objects. A sarcophagus 2 1/2 feet long in the Madras Museum from Sankavaram in Cuddapah district schematically resembles a ram; it contained an iron spearhead, the fragment of an iron knife, and huddled fragments of human bones, and was surrounded by pots of characteristic 'megalith' type. Another sarcophagus, from Pallavaram in Chingleput district, resembles an elephant; but such theriomorphs are exceptional.