Death being an ever present reality, people whether in the past or present have taken utmost care to bury their dead with rituals. Megalithic building had occurred in times distant from our memory. Oral traditions from the early historic phase have been used by archaeologists and historians in south India to argue that megalith-building was undertaken as part of a wider cult of the dead, especially of the heroes and have listed some rituals associated with the monuments. This paper does not intend to reject them. The author finds the early historic Tamil poems to be of limited nature in comprehensively analyzing burial rituals. The magnificent presence of the monuments in their midst have definitely influenced people living around them. Ethnographic data collected from people from people in megalithic sites show that memories of megalithic building could not be carried into the past. There are some traces of them, however. The same thing applies to rituals. Hill tribes seem to have maintained some rituals, distinct from the more Aryanised peoples in the plains although they too were not living in complete isolation. Megalithic monuments in some places are regarded as cult spots, while in some other places they have evoked fear. On the other hand, people generally regard their ancestors’ burial mounds in their house compounds with veneration. It implies that burial centres, removed from memory, have come to be feared and worshipped. Cult of the dead itself is a legacy from cultures including that of the megaliths. Colonial ethnographic reports suggest wider prevalence of burial among people. Cremation, earlier practiced by the Brahmins and the associated castes, is now slowly catching up among the other groups. An indepth analysis of burial rituals in villages in megalithic centres is attempted in this paper.

First Author: Rajan Koyu

Keywords:
megalithic building
cult of the dead
ethnographic data
hill tribes
Aryanised peoples
burial rituals