The similarity in the costume and style of art displayed in the preceding woodcut with that of the memorial stones leaves little or no doubt of their being approximately of the same age. As most of the memorial stones are inscribed and their dates at least approximately known, if the identity can be established the date of the dolmens can also be determined. Till, however, some one will take the trouble of photographing the cairns, so as to enable us to compare them with the standing stones, no certainty can be obtained; but as none of the sculptured stones go back a thousand years, and those most like the woodcut cannot claim five centuries of antiquity, these sculptured cairns in the Nilgiris cannot be so very old as is sometimes assumed.
218. Dolmen at Iwullee. From a photograph.
The second instance is curious and instructive. In the centre of the courtyard of a now ruined Sivite temple at Iwullee, in Dharwar, in the very centre of the dolmen country, now stands a regular tripod dolmen of the usual shape (woodcut No. 218). The question is, how got it there? No one who knows anything of India will, I presume, argue that the Brahminical followers of Siva would erect the sanctuary of their god in front of the tomb of one of the despised aboriginal tribes, if still reverenced by them, or would
