Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/512

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180
INDIA.
Chap. XIII.

the gate; and as it cannot be five centuries old, we have a limit to their age beyond which we cannot go.

220. Cross at Katapur. From a photograph.

Our next example is still more curious and interesting. In the cold weather of 1867-8, Mr. Mulheran, when attached to the Trigonometrical Survey of India, came accidentally across a great group of "cromlechs," situated on the banks of the Godavery, near Nirmul, about half-way between Hyderabad and Nagpore, in Central India. Some of these he photographed, and sent an account of them to the Asiatic Society of Bengal,[1] from which the following particulars are gleaned. "The majority of the cromlechs consist of a number of upright stones, sunk in the ground in the form of a square, and covered with one or two large slabs of sandstone. In some two bodies appear to have been interred, and in others only one. The crosses are found in the neighbourhood of Malúr and Katapur, two villages on the Nizam's side of the river. The crosses at Katapur (woodcut No. 220) are, with one exception, uninjured. All are situated to the right of the cromlechs near which they have been erected. Judging from the one lying exposed at Malúr, they are all above 10 feet in length, although

  1. 'J. A. S. B.' xxxvii. p. 116 et seqq.