Early India and Pakistan to Ashoka c9.30

c9.30

We return to south India. There it has been shown that megaliths, particularly port-holed cists, are widespread, but that other types are locally present and there are clear local variations. For example, in northern Mysore the cists are carefully walled and have sizeable and functional port-holes, whereas in the Pondicherry region they are roughly enclosed and their port-holes are small and presumably vestigial.⁹⁷ Along the ghats and the isolated coastal strip of Kerala there are, as we have seen, several individual types, though their contents seem to indicate approximate contemporaneity both with one another and with the south Indian megaliths generally. And not only that; the megalithic problem cannot be considered as a whole without some reference to the non-megalithic urn-burials or urn-fields which have been recorded chiefly from the eastern plains south of the Kistna river; notable sites being Ādichchanallūr in the Tirunelveli (Tinnevelly) district of the extreme south, the environs of Pondicherry, the Madras region,⁹⁸ Amaravati near the mouth of the Krishna, and Maski in Raichūr district on the Deccan plateau. In all this heterogeneous assemblage of funerary customs there are significant common factors which must now be defined. They are three in number.