The Enigma of Nilaskal and Byse megaliths

by Prof. Srikumar M. Menon.

Manipal University.

The NILASKAL megaliths

 One of the largest menhirs at Nilaskal.

Nilaskal (lit. “Standing Stones” in Kannada) is a village near the historic town of Nagara in Karnataka. Nagara is well known for the Nagara Fort, which attracts mostly domestic tourists. Nagara, known as Bidanur in earlier times, was the capital of the Keladi Nayaka dynasty which ruled the region after the collapse of the Vijayanagara Empire in 1565. They ruled as independent rulers till 1763, when they were conquered by Hyder Ali and became a part of Mysore. 

A panoramic view of the site at Nilaskal, towards west.

The landscape around Nagara is littered with vestiges of the Nayakas – forts, temples, a unique “water park” and memorials of the various rulers. However, the history of human occupation of this region goes back much further than recorded history and can be guessed at from the multitude of prehistoric monuments scattered in the landscape.

The winter solstice Sun framed between two menhirs of Nilaskal, at sunset. 

The most magnificent monument in the region is an alignment of menhirs at Nilaskal. The site was reported in 1959 by Narasimhaiah and also studied by Dr. Sundara, who recovered Neolithic pottery from a road cutting which disturbed part of the site. Our studies in this region have thrown up the remnants of more than 100 menhirs, many of them stumps broken off at ground level or slightly higher. Most of the menhirs are quarried slabs of varying heights and sizes, the largest among them being more than 3m wide at the base, and more than 6m tall, but a mere 30-45cm in thickness. There is another menhir of nearly similar size. Several are broken now, but must have been of similar size when intact and some have fallen. These menhirs occupy an area of nearly 100m east-west x 300m north-south.

Nilaskal: a general view (from west to east).

Currently a road divides the megalithic site into two unequal halves and some menhirs have been disturbed/destroyed by the construction of a school in the northern part of the site some 60 years ago. A few menhirs are in a plantation of trees adjacent to the school, but the most prominent menhirs are in a clearing in the western portion that constitutes the largest part of the site. The site slopes up gently to the west and as a consequence there is a raised horizon towards the west.

Nilaskal: showing menhirs disturbed by the construction of a house.

The menhirs which are basically stone slabs are all erected such that the long axes of their cross-sections are oriented north-south. We have discovered several sightlines between pairs of menhirs such that they frame the rising and setting Sun during the solstices. The number of such sightlines is too high to have arisen due to pure chance. The purpose of having multiple sightlines to the same horizon events (sunrises/sunsets of the solstices) is unclear, currently. 

The menhirs are all distributed only till the highest portion of the east-facing slope and none of them are situated after the ridge line – thereby making a strong case for the argument that their builders intended them to be visible against the sky. Moreover, several of the stones have notches cut into them to permit the viewing of the (raised) horizon to the west and other menhirs that constitute the sightlines. All these point to the definite possibility that the menhirs were erected with intentional alignments to the Solar Cycle, but the intent – whether the monument was a calendar device or some “magical” alignment concerned with the cult of the dead is unclear.

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The megaliths of BYSE

Byse: a general view.

Byse, which is located to the north of Nilaskal, is another alignment site of similar nature. The number of surviving stones at Byse is only 30, though and it is a much smaller site, occupying an area that is roughly 200m east-west x 600m north-south. 

The largest menhir at Byse: worshipped as “Bhootaraya” by the local populace currently.

A disturbed cairn burial at Byse.

A large fraction of the menhirs at Byse are natural boulders of elongated cross section, oriented in a similar manner as Nilaskal. Byse too boasts of similar sightlines as Nilaskal, leading us to believe that there is a series of such sites that we have dubbed the “Nilaskal series” of sites taking Nilaskal as a type site.

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The Megaliths of:  HERGAL, MUMBARU, ARAGA GATE.

Apart from Nilaskal and Byse, there are three more sites of similar nature nearby – Hergal, Mumbaru and Aaraga Gate, the last of which was discovered during our surveys. It looks like Nilaskal is the grand culmination in design of this series of sites, being more extensive, with larger and better worked stone slabs as menhirs. At least Byse shows the presence of sepulchral megaliths (cairns) too in the same site and a thoroughly planned excavation at Byse is likely to help resolve many of the unresolved issues in megalithic culture of southern India.

 The megaliths of Hergal.

Mumbaru megaliths.

          Map of the megalith sites near Hosanagara.

Srikumar M.Menon.
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