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Exploring India's Megalithic Culture, a Riddle Set in Stone

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Exploring India's Megalithic Culture, a Riddle Set in Stone Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... 24 September 2016 | E-Paper Sections Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone Photo: Rajat Ubhaykar Massive stone structures dotted across the subcontinent provide a fascinating glimpse into India’s prehistoric past Rajat Ubhaykar What is the most strikingly common feature of prehistoric cultures, from the icy fjords of Norway to the tropical plains of Tamil Nadu? 1 of 15 9/24/16, 12:25 AM Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... All of them, seemingly independently, struck upon the idea of erecting massive stone structures during the same era in history. These monuments—yes, these are the earliest surviving man-made monuments we know of—are called megaliths, derived from the Latin mega (large) and lith (stone). Megaliths were constructed either as burial sites or commemorative (non-sepulchral) memorials. The former are sites with actual burial remains, such as dolmenoid cists (box-shaped stone burial chambers), cairn circles (stone circles with defined peripheries) and capstones (distinctive mushroom-shaped burial chambers found mainly in Kerala). The urn or the sarcophagus containing the mortal remains was usually made of terracotta. Non-sepulchral megaliths include memorial sites such as menhirs . (The line separating the two is a bit blurry, since remains have been discovered underneath otherwise non-sepulchral sites, and vice versa.) Taken together, these monuments lend these disparate peoples the common traits of what we know as megalithic culture, one which lasted from the Neolithic Stone Age to the early Historical Period (2500 BC to AD 200) across the world. In India, archaeologists trace the majority of the megaliths to the Iron Age (1500 BC to 500 BC), though some sites precede the Iron Age, extending up to 2000 BC. For a while, scientific consensus was in favour of the theory that ideas emanated from a single cultural centre and were transported across the world by migrating populations—trans-cultural diffusion. Radical diffusionists went a step further, denying the possibility of parallel evolution of ideas completely, and asserting that all cultures and inventions can be tracked down to a single culture. Modern research, however, increasingly disputes this view, with a tilt in favour of independent origin of ideas and inventions. “Constructing a menhir is one of the simplest things man could have done. However, the similarities are indeed startling in the case of the more complex dolmens. The question of why they appear almost coincidentally has not yet been settled satisfactorily, though scientists now postulate that since 2 of 15 9/24/16, 12:25 AM Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... our brains are constructed in the same way, different peoples came to construct the same monuments independently,” says Srikumar Menon, professor of architecture, Manipal University. Southern man Megaliths are spread across the Indian subcontinent, though the bulk of them are found in peninsular India, concentrated in the states of Maharashtra (mainly in Vidarbha), Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. According to archaeologists R.K. Mohanty and V. Selvakumar, around 2,200 megalithic sites can be found in peninsular India itself, most of them unexcavated. Even today, a living megalithic culture endures among some tribes such as the Gonds of central India and the Khasis of Meghalaya. But who were the megalithic people really? What were their religious beliefs? How was their society organized? And where do they fit into the historical narrative of the Indian subcontinent? 3 of 15 9/24/16, 12:25 AM Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... The history of prehistoric India is one of epic migrations. From genome data, we know there were waves of migration from 70000 BC to 40000 BC. Consequently, there are four linguistic groups in India: Austro-Asiatic (the oldest), Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan (the most recent). According to Mayank Vahia, a scientist at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, who has studied the genetic history of the subcontinent, there was no significant migration into India between 40000 BC and 2000 BC, when Sanskrit-speaking Indo-Europeans first made their presence felt. As megalithic societies were preliterate, the racial or ethnic origins of the megalithic people are thus difficult to pin down. The discovery of a stone axe with what seemed to be inscriptions in the Harappan script from a burial chamber in Tamil Nadu did bring up the tantalizing possibility of cultural contact between Harappans and the megalithic people. Iravatham Mahadevan, renowned epigraphist and vocal proponent of the Dravidian origins of Harappan civilization, had declared, “This confirms that the Neolithic people of Tamil Nadu shared the same language family as the Harappan group, which can only be Dravidian. The discovery provides the first evidence that the Neolithic people of the Tamil country spoke a Dravidian language.” However, Ravi Korisettar, retired professor of archaeology at Karnatak University, says these claims have been summarily dismissed by a committee of archaeologists. “These were accidental scratch marks which resembled the Indus script,” he says. Korisettar has conducted extensive research on the mortuary practices, belief systems and political economy of megalithic peoples. He says megalithism can be given credit for the rise of the political economy typical to settled communities. “Megaliths were not built for commoners. They signify the emergence of a ruling class or elite who presided over a surplus economy,” he says. Based on archaeobotanical research, Mukund Kajale of University College London posited that megalithic people carried out agricultural activity in both the rabi and kharif seasons. A large variety of grains such 4 of 15 9/24/16, 12:25 AM Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... as rice, wheat, kodo millet, barley lentil, black gram, horse gram, common pea, pigeon pea and Indian jujube have been recovered from habitations, showing that the subcontinent has displayed remarkable gastronomic continuity over three millennia. But what about continuity in belief systems? Korisettar says that the very idea of burying the dead along with burial goods indicates strong belief in life after death and possibly rebirth among megalithic people. “In some instances, we have seen teeth being cut off from the body and buried with the remains for use in the next life,” he says. The respect accorded to the buried individual ensured that the grave and the goods contained within were not subjected to vandalism and theft. Paddy husk has been found in burial sites, further proof of the megalithic peoples’ commitment towards ensuring their dead a comfortable afterlife. They also believed in some idea of a soul. “Sangam literature has a few mentions of the soul reaching the upper world out of three worlds,” says Selvakumar, who has excavated several megalithic sites and studied references to megalithic culture in Tamil Sangam literature. Their belief in the three worlds can be deduced from a peculiar object recovered from an excavation: a tripod made by three copper rods arranged conically on a circular base. On all three rods, the figures of deer, bird and fish were fixed on the base, middle and on the conical top, respectively, representing the deer on the ground, the bird in the air and the fish in water. “This item must have had some religious and ideological connotation of life or death as accepted by the megalithic people. According to Mohanty, findings of such item from burial may have significance on their belief system of the dead travelling through three different worlds,” notes Dilip Chakrabarti, emeritus professor of South Asian archaeology at Cambridge University, in the third volume of his History of Ancient India. The living megalithic culture in India provides strong hints regarding the 5 of 15 9/24/16, 12:25 AM Exploring India’s megalithic culture, a riddle set in stone - Livemint http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/ah8MlN3mwHQjIpmBZ... belief systems of prehistoric megalithic people. “The Gond people believe in life after death, they believe that every human being has two souls: the life spirit and the shadow. The life spirit goes to bada devta but the shadow still stays in the village after the erection of stone memorial. Gond people believe that the first and foremost duty of the shadow spirit is to watch over the moral behavior of the people and punish those who go against the tribal law,” notes a paper by S. Mendaly on the living megalithic culture of the Gonds of Nuaparha in Odisha. Interestingly, the popular Indian belief in the evil eye—buri nazar in Hindi—may be a legacy of the megalithic age. Banded agate beads with eye patterns have been recovered from megalithic sites. These were generally used by them as protection against evil spirits, a belief that survives to this day in India in the form of nazar battus such as amulets or strings of limes and chillies. Building megaliths Understandably, the construction of megaliths was a massive endeavour, requiring the active involvement of the community. “Experiment on reconstruction of a burial from Vidarbha suggests that 70 to 80 individuals were required to construct a burial having 13.5m diameter with a deposit of 80 to 85 cm in two and half to three days without any leisure... Participation in construction by the community members could be social norm without labour charge. If not by any labour charge, a feast was probably prepared to honour the labour force provided by community members.
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