Stone-way to the Iron Age

They may not be as spectacular as Stonehenge in Britain or as grand as the temples built by ancient kings, but the large stones scattered across India are valuable links to the past. Gargi Gupta reports on efforts to preserve and conserve these megalithic sites

They look like large stone boulders plonked randomly on the red, mineral-rich soil on the outskirts of Chitarpur town in Chhattisgarh's Ramgarh district. To look at, no one would think these are remnants of an Iron Age settlement, and date back to between 1000 BC and 1500 BC. Rough-hewn and uncarved, these large stones called megaliths lack the grandeur of the temples, tombs and palaces built by our ancient kings and emperors, the sophistication of the Indus Valley Civilisation's urban system or the obvious aesthetic appeal of the sculptures or rock art of Ajanta caves. Neither are they as distinctive as the Stonehenge in Britain, arguably the most famous megalithic structures in the world.

So you can't really blame the owner of the brick-kiln near these menhirs (standing stones) in Chitarpur who has slowly been encroaching on the field where the stones lie scattered. "We are not very sure how many, but some of these megaliths have already been lost," says Rituraj Bharti, a conservative architect with Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), which is preparing a plan to document and preserve megalithic sites in Chitarpur and Hazaribagh (in neighbouring Jharkhand). An interpretation centre to spread awareness about these structures among visitors and locals is also planned.

This would be the first time an official body is taking steps to conserve the megalithic heritage of Chhattisgarh, says Subhahsis Das, a Raipur resident who has also been documenting megalithic structures in and around Hazaribagh and campaigning to preserve them for the past two decades. Sadly, the Archaeological Survey of India has not excavated and does not preserve all but a handful of the most well-known megaliths such as Junapani in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region, the unique 'umbrella-stone' megaliths of Cheramanganad in Thrissur, Kerala and Burzahom in Kashmir. His website megalithindia.in is the single largest repository of information on the subject.

The Chitarpur megaliths are not the first, or the last to be destroyed. In 2011, says Das, tall menhirs at a megalithic cluster on the outskirts of Obra village in Pathalgadda block of Chatra district of Jharkhand were destroyed to make way for a road. Also under threat are the Chano (Rola) megaliths near Hazaribagh, says Das, where houses have been constructed very close to the site. Scholars like Srikumar Menon and Mayank N Vahia of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), who have researched the megaliths, especially in south India, report the loss of many other sites in recent times — Kyaddigeri and Gudde Maradi in Karnataka and Thiropuror in Tamil Nadu being two.

"India is rich in megalithic sites. In south India, alone, around 2,000 have been identified," says Vahia. South India has a large chunk of them, but there are megaliths scattered all across India — Burzahom in Kashmir is one of the oldest such sites in India, Meghalaya has an entire cluster near the town of Nartiang in the Jaintia Hills District and a few have been reported in Rajasthan and near the Indus Valley site of Dhola Vira in Gujarat, says Menon. Besides, in central India, there are important megaliths in and around Nagpur and Chandrapur districts of Maharashtra.

Though they were first "discovered" by British archaeologist J Babington in 1823, megaliths are still imperfectly understood. They have not been studied extensively nor is there even a map to tell you exactly how many there are and where. Also, not all of these stone structures are technically 'megaliths' or large stones — some are flat stones arranged in a circle, some are shaped like a dolmen (stones fixed vertically into the ground and covered with a flat stone), or heaped together in a "cairn" — their sheer diversity making it difficult for scholars to come up with a theory for them.

There's consensus, though, on their use. Historians and archaeologists now agree that megaliths were mostly used for burial — either as a memorial, or to preserve the mortal remains of the dead from being desecrated by wild animals. So most megaliths have burial urns, containing the bones of the dead, sometimes belonging to more than one body, and other artefacts such as pottery, iron implements, beads and, sometimes, even gold. "The belief that they have buried gold is one of the principal reasons why megalithis are vandalised," says Das.

Not all megaliths date back to prehistoric times. Many tribes in remote parts of the country still follow megalithic burial practices — the best known of these sites being Chokahatu, an eight-acre site 80km from Ranchi, which is covered literally with thousands of stone slabs where Hos, Oraons, Mundas and others have been building dolmens to their dead for thousands of years. Some of the megaliths of Nartiang are also dated as recent as the 16th century.

Another important use of megaliths is astronomical, showing that the ancient people who built them understood the complex mathematics governing the movement of the sun and stars, and used them to keep track of time. "The famous megaliths at Punkri Buwadih near Hazaribagh are still used to mark the equinox, and people come here from all over the world to see them," says Das. Thus, understanding how these megaliths function is important since it is evidence of a technical advancements of these ancient people who left behind no written evidence of their lives and times.