STONES AT NURTIUNG.
beautiful of Indian orchids) flourished on one of its
limbs. A small plantain with austere woolly scarlet
fruit, bearing ripe seeds, was planted in this sacred
grove, where trees of the most tropical genera grew
mixed with the pine, birch, Myrica, and Viburnum.
The Nurtiung Stonehenge is no doubt in part
religious, as the grove suggests, and also designed for
cremation, the bodies being burnt on the altars. In
the Khasia these upright stones are generally raised
simply as memorials of great events, or of men whose
ashes are not necessarily, though frequently, buried or
deposited in hollow stone sarcophagi near them, and
sometimes in a clay urn placed inside a sarcophagus,
or under horizontal slabs.
The usual arrangement is a row of five, seven, or
more erect oblong blocks with round heads (the highest
being placed in the middle), on which are often wooden
discs and cones : more rarely pyramids are built.
Broad slabs for seats are also common by the wayside.
Mr. Yule, who first drew attention to these
monuments, mentions one thirty-two feet by fifteen,
and two in thickness ; and states that the sarcophagi
(which, however, are rare) formed of four slabs,
resemble a drawing in Bell’s Circassia, and descriptions
in Irby and Mangles’ Travels in Syria. He adds that
many villages derive their names from these stones,
“ mau” signifying “ stone:” thus “ Mausmai” is “ the
stone of oath,” because, as his native informant said,
“ there was war between Churra and Mausmai, and
when they made peace, they swore to it, and placed a
stone as a witness ; ” forcibly recalling the stone