MARch 1, 1872.]
93
REVIEW.
as a study, owes almost everything to him, and since the publication of his “Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India” in 1845, to the present day, his interest in it and his zeal for its thorough investigation has steadily increased. But few of the many contributions he has made to the cause of his favourite science promise to be more in portant in their ultimate issues than the service he has just rendered by the publication of his “Rude
hirs, Mr. Fergusson sets himself to prove—1st, that they “are generally sepulchral, or connected di rectly, or indirectly, with the rites of the dead ; 2nd, that they are not temples in any usual or ap propriate sense of the term ; and lastly,–that they were generally erected by partially civilized races after they had [in the west] come in contact with the Romans, and most of them may be considered as belonging to the first ten centuries of the
Stone Monuments.”
Christian Era."
The age of the Monuments treated of has long been a mystery, and of late the tendency has been to relegate them almost without exception to “pre historic" times. Mr. Fergusson, however, is justly dissatisfied with all the theories on this point broached during the last two centuries. Stukeley, as he remarks, “cut the vessel adrift from the moorings of common sense, and she has since been a derelict tossed about by the winds and waves of every passing fancy, till recently, when an attempt has been made to tow the wreck into the misty haven of prehistoric antiquity. If ever she reaches that nebulous region, she may as well be broken up in despair, as she can be of no further use for human purposes.” Further, as he remarks else where, some of these remains cannot belong to prehistoric, while the others belong to the historic period —“all belong to the one epoch or to the other. Either it is that Stonehenge and Avebury and all such are the temples of a race so ancient as to be beyond the ken of mortal man, or they are the sepulchral monuments of a people who lived so nearly within the limits of true historic times, that their story can easily be recovered." And if the author has proved any point, it is that most of the European remains of this class have been erected since the Christian era, and most of those in Eng land, at least, between the fifth and tenth centuries. Stonehenge, for example, belongs to the period of the struggle between the Saxons and the Britons under Ambrosius, and most probably to the years 466 to 470 A. D. The argument he advances is backed by the results of extensive reading, and from the cumulative character of the evidence becomes
very powerful. And it perhaps deserves all the more attention because the results are not those of
predilection:-" When I first took up the subject,” says Mr. Fergusson in his preface, “I hoped that the rude stone monuments would prove to be old,
—so old, indeed as to form the “incunabula' of other styles, and that we might thus, by a simple process, arrive at the genesis of styles. Bit by bit that theory has crumbled to pieces as my knowledge increased, and most reluctantly have I been forced to adopt the more prosaic conclusions of the present volume. If, however, this represents the truth, that must be allowed to be an ample compensation for the Joss of any poetry which has hitherto hung round the mystery of the Rude Stone Monuments." Regarding these monuments—whether Tumuli, Dolmens or Cromlechs, Circles, Avenues, or Men
It is not to be expected that all that the author advances will stand the test of a rigid criticism, or be confirmed by future discoveries, but this book has the great merit of, for the first time, presenting a distinct and positive view of the age or use of these megalithic remains, and if suggestions on many minor points have been offered, which it might be difficult to establish by proof, he avows he has put them forth—“because it often happens that such sug gestions turn the attention of others to points which would otherwise be overlooked, and may lead to discoveries of great importance ; while if disproved, they are only so much rubbish swept out of the path of truth, and their detection can do no harm to any one but their author.” We need scarcely add that a writer who has added so much to our knowledge can afford to be corrected if it should turn out that
on some minor point he has not divined the truth.
We cannot attempt to follow the author over the whole of the British Isles, Scandinavia and North Germany, France—so rich in these remains, Southern Europe, Northern Africa, the Mediterranean Islands, and Western Asia, in all of which regions such monuments are found ; but we must pause at India to make a few brief extracts.
“The number of rude-stone monuments in India,” says Mr. Fergusson, “is probably as great or even greater than that of those to be found in Europe, and they are so similar that, even if they should not turn out to be identical, they form a most im portant branch of this enquiry. Even irrespective, however, of these, the study of the history of architecture in India is
calculated to
throw so
much light on the problems connected with the study of megalithic monuments in the West that, for that cause alone, it deserves much more attention than it has hitherto received.”
The first tribe noticed as erecting rude-stone monuments are the Khassias, in whose country they “exist in greater numbers than perhaps in any, other portion of the globe of the same extent. All travellers who have visited the country have been
struck with the fact and with the curious similarity of their forms to those existing in Europe.” . . . . . “The natives make no mystery about them, and Inany were erected within the last few years, or are being erected now, and they are identical in form with those which are grey with years, and must have
been set up in the long forgotten past." The top of one dolmen “measured 30 feet 4 inches by 10 feet
in breadth, and had an average thickness of 1 foot,”
