A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c8.15

c8.15

Lastly, the Megaliths of South India present a series of questions that have found no satisfactory answer as yet. Their existence has been noticed for well over a century, and some investigations were made in the early years of this century at Ādichanallur (Tinnevelly district), Perumbair and the Nilgiris. But the work was not followed up. It is only since 1945 that the Indian Archæological Department has resumed systematic work on these monuments. A detailed ground survey has been conducted in the Chingleput district and adjoining areas, Pudukkottai, and Cochin; and a few monuments have been excavated. The monuments of each of these areas apparently belong to a common Megalithic complex; the dead were exposed for excarnation, and the bones were collected in part and interred in different ways—in sarcophagi with legs, in urns, in pits or dolmenoid cists with port-holes, besides circular rock-cut underground vaults with or without a central pillar (typical of the West Coast). Without stopping to note these differences in detail, we may observe that iron implements and polished black-and-red ware pottery are generally found all over. ‘These monuments have invariably been found to occur on rocky high grounds which are themselves unfit for cultivation, in close juxtaposition to a hillock and an irrigation-tank, but in very close proximity to arable land’ (Srinivasan and Banerjee). This was perhaps the beginning of irrigated rice-cultivation in South India.