An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology v1.c19.s4.1

v1.c19.s4.1

Attention to the so-called Asura sites in Dt Ranchi was prominently drawn by Ray, (1915, 1920) according to whom the Mundas, the present-day inhabitants of large parts of the Dt, regard the Asurs or Asuras as having preceded them in the region. Such antiquities as do not belong to the Mundas have been ascribed to these Asuras irrespective of their nature and age. They range from Palaeolithic tools, copper and iron objects, coins, architectural fragments of temples, graveyards, ruins of baked-brick houses, dried-up tanks and so on. Surely such a motely of disparate objects cannot belong to a single people, far less to a reasonable chronological range. Nevertheless Ray's exploration had the merit of bringing to light a large number of sites, particularly in Khunti Subdivision. Subsequent investigations have produced Palaeolithic [4.2.4], Microlithic [4.5] and Neolithic [4.6.5] tools in the whole of the Chota Nagpur region. Megalithic monuments, largely in the form of menhirs [4.17.4], are many, but as megalithism is still a living tradition in the region they cannot be related to any one of the established Megalithic groups of India, either structurally or chronologically.