THE GIGANTIC DOLMEN OF BAGODAR (Dhekia Pathar)
The Dhekia Dolmen (Left click for a full sized picture). |
The Bagodar dolmen is incredible with a gargantuan capstone over thirty feet in length and is about ten feet wide. It has been placed on equally huge orthostats. The eastern façade of the megalith which has been whitewashed, clearly demonstrates the colossal capstone which has been placed on two separate large stones at a gap of a few feet. (The photograph illustrates the entire configuration of the dolmen with the large capstone on two large stones which have been indicated as Orthostat A and b respectively).
Inside the temple created in the space between two orthostats (Left click for a full sized picture). |
Approaching the southern side of the monument you can see how two relatively smaller yet large and correct-sized boulders have been used as wedges below the capstone and that of orthostat A and in the process refraining the both from tumbling over, keep the capstone levelled and even to acquire the required direction of alignments. (The two wedges as seen in the pic have been marked as Wedges 1 and 2 respectively).
Also note how the circled area in the pic below shows the stone below the orthostat A has been cut to fit it.
The dolmen locally known as the “Dhekia Pathar” or the rice husking pedal is on a rocky outcrop which surprisingly is naturally positioned at the intersection of three hills of which one is Arar at about 20 deg North of East.
Arar is an austric Santhali term which means the Orion constellation. Arar is also a beautiful landscape architecture depicting the reclining pregnant form of the ubiquitous Mother Goddess. The pregnant belly has two bulges on its either sides and a pointed peak in the middle...very unique in its design. The Dhekia capstone at the northern flank can be seen to have been sharpened and has been made to point towards this triangular tip of the hill.
To the right of the dolmen at about a 100 deg east is the conical Khatia Hill and to the west at about 290 deg is another hill whose name I couldn’t get.
The recumbent pregnant figure of the Arar landscape to which the dolmen is aligned in the North east (Left click for a full sized picture). |
The effortlessness of the placement of this monstrous capstone undeniably fascinates the beholder.
What or which technology had enabled the early humankind to lift such colossal stones is unknown to us. The dolmen surely suggests that giants may have had treaded upon this earth in hoary antiquity or else what possible explanations could we furnish for such ultra human acts? Whatever be it, this is true that the sciences with which such enormous stones were once raised by the ancients has disappeared with them.
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Raghavendra
Manasi Trivedi