Note 26 — Chapter V · Megalithic Monuments.

With regard to the megalithic monuments of India, we can only repeat what we have already said. Colonel Meadows Taylor has counted 2,129 in the district of Bellary (Deccan) alone. Many legends are connected with them which remind us of those of Europe, some attributing their erection to dwarfs or rants, to fairies or to genii, whilst others think they were the work of the Kauranas and Pandaves, the celebrated families whose long struggle is described in the Mahabharata, and were probably aboriginal races of the continent. The plain of Jellalabad and of Nagpore, stud the valley of Cabul are literally strewn with these monuments. They are not less numerous in the Presidency of Madras, where they chiefly consist of subterranean chambers made of huge unhewn stones or of dolmens above ground surrounded by one or more circles of upright stones, such as are shorn in Fig. 65. Major Biddulph, when he ascended the valleys of the Hindoo Koosh Mountains, was astonished to see on every side megalithic monuments resembling those of his own country, and, like them, the work of an unknown race.26