the age of which we must, for the present at least, leave wrapped in the mists of the long prehistoric past.
Their uses seem more easily determined than their dates; with only a few rare and easily-recognizable exceptions, all seem originally to have been intended for sepulchral or cenotaphic purposes. Either, like the great chambered tumuli and the dolmens, they were actually the burying-places of the illustrious dead; or, like the greater circles and the alignments, they marked battle-fields, and were erected in honour of those slain there, whether their bodies were actually laid within their precincts or not; or, like the rude stone pillars of the Khassia hills, they were offerings to the spirits of the departed.
With the fewest possible exceptions[1] and these of the most insignificant character, their connexion with the relics of the dead can be proved from all having become places for ancestral worship and having under various forms been used for commemorating or honouring departed spirits. No single instance has been authenticated of either circles or dolmens in any other form, except perhaps single stones, having ever been used for the worship of Odin, or of the gods called Mercury, Mars, Venus, or the other gods of the Druids, still less is there any trace of the worship of the sun or moon or any of the heavenly host; nor, I am sorry to think, can the serpent lay claim to any temple of this class. Honour to the dead and propitiation of the spirits of the departed seem to have been the two leading ideas that both in the East and West gave rise to the erection of these hitherto mysterious structures which are found numerously scattered over the face of the Old World.
- ↑ The accidental resemblance of the microlithic temples of the Deccan mentioned above (p. 467) can hardly be quoted as an exception. They are said to be dedicated to Vetal, but it is not clear that the stones of the circle do not represent dead, as they certainly do absent persons, and the sacrifice, after all, is offered up to their departed spirits; it being a form of the present day we do not know how much its spirit may not be changed from the ancient rite which it was originally intended to typify.
