ON A MEANS EMPLOYED FOR REMOVING AND

ERECTING MENHIRS.

BY THOMAS INMAN, M.D.

Ir is probable that there are few who have either read or travelled much who have not had their interest incited by seeing or hearing of the enormous masses of stone which have been moved from one place to another, by people who are supposed to have had few, if any, of the modern appliances used by our engineers. The huge size of the stones employed in the temples of Baalbec and Palmyra, and the gigantic masses in Egypt, known as the Great and Little Memnon, have long arrested the attention of archæologists; whilst, in more modern times, we have been able to get a reliable historical account of the removal to St. Petersburg of the vast fragment of rock upon which the colossal statue of Peter the Great reposes.

We in England have had our curiosity aroused by seeing such massive stones as exist in Stonehenge arranged upon a definite plan; and those who have visited Stanton Drew, near Bristol, may see great lumps of undressed stone, of lesser height than those of Stonehenge, but of greater weight.

The highest stone set upright which we have in England, is in a churchyard in Rudstone, in Yorkshire. Of this, 12 feet are buried, but there are 29 feet above the surface of the ground, giving a total length of 41 feet.

At Loc Maria Kir, in Brittany, the ancient Armorica, there is a fallen menhir, which, having been originally placed upright, has fallen or been thrown down and fractured into four fragments. Its total length is 61 English feet, and the weight of the block is calculated at 260 tons.

The weight of some of the stones in some of the Egyptian pyramids exceeds this, and the weight of the Great Memnon is far greater.

The problem how these enormous masses have been moved has often been discussed, and it would be useless for me to enter on this wide subject. Layard has found a solution of a part of the matter in Ancient and Modern Assyria, having transported the enormous human-headed bulls a considerable distance, by means of a rudely formed truck, drawn by the main force of some hundreds of men. Pictures found in the tombs of Egypt have also shown us that the chief means employed in the conveyance of enormous masses of stone was the sheer strength of numbers.

It is interesting, as I may notice in passing, to observe that the fishermen and women in Italy employ the same method of hauling on the two ropes of their large nets as were used by the Egyptian slaves. Each one has a broad band, which falls from the left shoulder to the right hip, and there terminates in a limp cord, having a large leather button at its free extremity. The free end is struck upon the main drag-rope, and at once laps so tightly round it that the man can at once throw all his weight into the shoulder strap. By this means the main rope is never weakened, and the person can, as soon as he has reached the upper margin of the shore, unfasten himself from that part of the rope, and go seaward to take his place once more at the drag.

Again, in the Lateran Museum at Rome, there is a sculpture which depicts the powerful movable crane which was used in building by the Romans.

But, in the cases referred to, there has evidently been considerable artistic knowledge, and the engineering, however rude, has been directed by thought and skill.

I desire rather to call the attention of the Society to those cases in which there cannot be said to be any engineer

ing knowledge at all, at least in the ordinary sense of the word, and in doing so I shall confine myself, as far as possible, to the erection of upright stones or menhirs.

I scarcely need tell the Society, that menhirs have been erected in countries widely separated. One may find them from the east of India to the west of Europe and the British Isles. Stone circles exist in the Dekkan, on the east, which do not essentially differ from the stone circles in Cornwall, and much ingenuity has been exercised in the endeavour to form a reasonable theory about the idea which has occupied the minds of those who raised them up.

When a party has long been wandering in a mist over an extensive plain, it is a great pleasure to discover something which is real; a something which will act as a landmark, and unite the different members in their previously divergent opinions as to the proper track.

Having long had an interest in this subject, I have never lost sight of an opportunity of making inquiries about the matter from those who have been in India, and especially in those parts where menhirs are very common. Not long ago it was my good fortune to spend a long evening in the presence of Mr. Greey, a civil engineer, who had been stationed in a somewhat out-of-the-way district in Hindostan, to prepare for and to lay a railway. To me his conversation was full of interest, for he was a keen observer and a shrewd man. Amongst other things, I may notice that from his own observation he had come to the same conclusions as my friend, Dr. Oldham, has done, viz., that "malaria," in the ordinary sense of the word, does not exist, and that the cause of ague, remittents, etc., is exposure to cold after the body has been exhausted by the heat of the sun and toil. But the most striking part of his discourse was that which treated about menhirs; and I was extremely desirous that he should put into writing, for one society or another, that which he

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told me. He promised that he would, but he died suddenly a few days after I saw him, and, as he left no written memoranda, I am obliged to draw upon my memory.

This I regret much, for, in the first place, I dare not be quite sure what people of India he was speaking of. I made a note of it at the time, in pencil, but the word became obliterated in my pocket during a shaking railway journey, but I think that Mr. Greey called them Khasias, and I feel more supported in this recollection by having found out, since our chat, that these people have already been described as menhir raisers.

A good account of this tribe is to be found in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of London, October, 1871, and which was written by the pen of Major Godwin Austen, of the Topographical Survey of India. The people in question are a large tribe living on the highlands of the northeast frontier of Bengal, and occupy what are called the Khasia Hills. Of these Major Austen writes, "Certainly the most striking objects of interest in the Khasia Hills are the upright stone monuments that are to be seen all over the country; these, set up by the wayside, or in the villages, more frequently cutting the sky on prominent hills, with the large slabs horizontally set before them, at once recall the Druidical remains of our own island. The tall upright stones are called 'Mao Bynna,' equivalent to a stone to make known.' They are also known by the term 'Mao Shinran,' the male stone, whilst the flat seat-like slab in front is called Mao Kynthi,' the female stone, representative of all life being in pairs. Without the slab the monument would be imperfect. These stones have nothing whatever to do with death or burial or with any funeral obsequies. The monument simply perpetuates the memory of some person long deceased, who, as a spirit, has watched over and brought good fortune to a descendant, race, or clan. Thus, a certain old

woman, of the Kur clan, not famous for anything particular during her life, but to whom many virtues were assigned after her death, for the particular sub-clan (Nonglariang) to which she belonged, from being very poor, became wealthy and prosperous under her guardian angelship. To honour this person, sixty years after her death, five well-cut stones were erected to her memory, and as the clan continued to prosper, it added, on the other side of the road, but opposite to the former, another line of five stones."

The stones are never erected in even numbers, and the most common numbers are 3, 5, 7; even numbers are considered imperfect; and though at times the stones are arranged in a circle, they have generally a linear arrangement, as have those at Karnak, in Brittany.

Sometimes the stones are erected under a vow -a sick man, perhaps, promising to erect a stone, or stones, to an ancestor, in case he should recover.

In setting up these stones, all members of the community are under an obligation to assist, without other payment than a slight repast when the work is done. But the stonecutters are paid, and a rude music is made to entertain them during their labours.

Major Austen said, that he never saw the process of raising a stone into the upright position, but he saw the spars which had formed a sort of cradle, on which the last stone erected had been moved. They consisted, he says, of strong curved limbs of trees, roughly smoothed and rounded, and would present a very small surface to friction. These stones, he adds, had been taken from the side of a hill near, and had apparently been wedged out of the face of a step in the exposed sandstone strata. It is clear, on this occasion, that main strength was used in dragging, and not in simple carrying. Sometimes granite is used, and the following gives an idea of the size of the largest slabs the Major saw. One of