These circles appear to be a remnant of antiquity of a similar species to those of the Puniha-Pandawars, a great number of which are to be seen scattered on the adjacent heights about a mile west of a place called Durnacotta. The stones composing these circles are of a hard blackish granite, very irregular in shape, measuring in general about 3 feet in height, and of the same dimension in thickness. The country people seem ignorant on the subject of these antiquities, and can give no information for what purposes they were designed. It is reported that circles of a similar description are very numerous among the skirts of the hills of Wudlamaun and others in that neighbourhood, that on some of these being opened by the late Rajah, Vassareddy, they were found to contain human bones of a large size, and that in some there were earthern pots curiously placed together containing ashes or charcoal. Similar to the above at Amravutty, on the river Christna or Kistna, is to be seen a mound called Depaldenna.[1]
Drawings of great numbers of these circles may be seen in Mackenzie’s manuscripts abovementioned. I shall give a drawing of only one of them, because, although there is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of the accounts, yet no attempt has been made to ascertain of what numbers of stones these circles originally consisted, which was the only thing that could render them really useful; but which, as was originally the case in England, was thought to be of no consequence. It is, however, remarkable that, in the circle which I have given, fig. 11, as the reader will find on counting them, (allowance being made for one evidently broken,) 19 stones, the number of the Metonic cycle, are found.
11. For the origin of the cross we must go to the Buddhists and to the Lama of Tibet, who takes his name from the cross, called in his language Lamh, which is with his followers an object of profound veneration.[2]
The cross of the Buddhists is represented with leaves and flowers springing from it, and placed upon a mount Calvary, as among the Roman Catholics. They represent it in various ways, but the shaft with the cross bar and the Calvary remain the same. The tree of life and knowledge, or the Jamba tree, in their maps of the world, is always represented in the shape of a cross, eighty-four Yoganas (answering to the eighty-four years of the life of him who was exalted upon the cross) or 423[3] miles high, including the three steps of the Calvary.[4]
12. The celebrated Monk Georgius, in his Tibetinum Alphabetum, p. 203, has given plates (in my figures No. 14) of the God Indra nailed to a cross, with five wounds. These crosses are to be seen in Nepaul, especially at the corners of roads and on eminences. Indra is said to have been crucified by the keepers of the Hindoo garden of Paradise for having robbed it. The country of Nepaul is evidently the Caucasus where Alexander went to look at the cave of Prometheus, to whom the whole mythos obviously applies. But it is the same as that of Jesus, evidently existing here also, long before the time of Christ. All these crucifixes, &c., &c., must be well known to our Indian travellers. Have the Romish Monks been more honest than our philosophers of Calcutta? It would be absurd to deny that I think they have. Ah! old Roger Bacon, how truly hast thou said, “Omnia ad religionem in suspicione habenda”!
Georgius says, “Si ita se res habet, ut existimat Beausobrius, Indi, et Budistæ quorum religio, eadem est ac Tibetana, nonnisi a Manichæis nova hæc deliriorum portenta acceperunt. Hæ namque gentes præsertim in urbe Nepal, Luna XII. Badr seu Bhadon Augusti mensis, dies
