we must make a distinction between battle-fields and cemeteries; and I confess the idea that the cairns at Jewurgi mark a battle-field, and the dolmens at Rajunkoloor a cemetery, appears to account for the phenomena better than the other hypothesis. If this is not so, as the distance between Rajunkoloor and Jewurgi is only fifty miles, we must assume either that the district was inhabited by two different races of men at the same time, practising different modes of sepulture, or we must concede that the one is older than the other, and that the one race had been dispossessed and was succeeded by the other. The difficulties attending either of these suppositions appear to me infinitely greater than those involved in assuming that the one is a battle-field, the other a cemetery. The only thing that would make me hesitate about this is the presence of several cairns at Rajunkoloor. These, however, do not appear to have been opened, and we do not consequently know whether the same instances of decapitation were to be found, or whether the bodies were arranged in the same manner as at Jewurgi.
Be this as it may, if these sections are to be depended on, it appears to be tolerably certain that these tombs cannot be old. It seems impossible that human bones could remain so entire and perfect as these are represented to be, so near the surface and in a recently disturbed soil, where rain and moisture must easily have penetrated at all times. A medical man on the spot might determine whether two or three or five centuries have elapsed since these bodies were laid where they are found; but I should be very much surprised if he raised their date beyond the last named figure. It is hazardous, however, to pronounce on such questions from the scanty data we have before us.
There is still another class of dolmens, or rather kistvaens, common on the Nilgiri hills and throughout the hill region of Malabar. In it the chamber is formed like those described above, but always buried in the earth, only showing the cap-stone flush with the surface of the soil. One of these, in the Coorg country, is worth quoting, from its possessing two circular apertures, like those of the Plas Newydd tumulus (woodcut No. 48). This one, however, has a diaphragm dividing it into two chambers. If the Welsh one was so partitioned, the wall has disappeared.
