THE LOST CITY OF MEGALITHS OF VANGCHHIA. MIZORAM. NORTH-EAST INDIA.

Alignments of stones. Vangchhia. Credit: mizomegaliths.blogspot.in

Decorative menhir of Vangchhia. Credit:by H.Lalnunmawia

Near the border of Mynamar in Mizoram in North East India is a sleepy hamlet of Vangchhia. The place houses a large megalithic site that once comprises of hundreds of tall menhirs. Runneihthanga remembers it as a place of shadows. “When we were children, there were hundreds of menhirs. They cast long shadows and we often played among them,” said the 69-year-old villager.

There were so numerous that no one seemed to have kept count of how many were lost over the years. “Every time someone died in the village, us children and teenagers would come here with the blacksmith. He would pound off a piece with his big hammer, large enough for us to carry, and all of us would carry one or two each and give it to the young men making the grave,” he says.

Petroglyphs of concentric cirlces on menhirs. Credit:by H.Lalnunmawia

At the cemetery, older villagers would use these rocks to build a particular kind of grave, verily a casket of stone. Called tianhrang, they are no longer as common throughout Mizoram. But for many generations, there was nothing but these graves.

Whenever there was a death in the village, explains F Laldawla, a villager in his sixties, the young men would dig the ground at the cemetery, slightly bigger than would fit an average person.

Then they would line the bottom and the sides with flat pieces of rock and then — with great care and in a particular way that often ended in a cave-in if it was done otherwise — stack the rocks atop each other while leaving just a couple of feet, or even less, open. When the body arrived at the cemetery after the funeral, they would inter it by sliding it in through the mouth of this small, man-made cave, stack more rocks on top so it became a coffin of stone, and then shovel earth on it.

A water pavilion like structure excavated by ASI. Credit: Indian Express.

At Vangchhia, Champhai district, perhaps because so many flat rocks were available at the field of menhirs just outside the village, the practice was in vogue for a long time. Laldawla or his wife did not immediately remember when the practice stopped.

The best rocks were, of course, pieces hammered off from the menhirs that stood at what is now famous across Mizoram as Kawtchhuah Ropui — the first and only archaeological site to have so far been protected (and led to a full-fledged excavation project) by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Mizoram. The current interest in the area, and sites around it, many hope, will help lift the fog over the history of how the Mizo community came to occupy the lands they do and perhaps reveal some hidden histories. 

Strange wall in Lungropui about 5 kilometres from Vangchhia. Credit: Facebook Page of Vangchhia.

Menhirs bearing enigmatic engravings were by no means unique to Vangchhia. Entire clusters of menhirs in smaller densities were spread across the eastern hill range of Mizoram at sites near the villages of Farkawn, Lianpui, Khankawn, Khawbung, Vaphai and Dungtlang, while apparently ancient iron artefacts and old pots, both broken and whole, have been recently unearthed at Zawlsei and Khawbung. Dungtlang, in addition, has a vast hilltop site across which is spread across what appears to be the remains of an ancient settlement — stone blocks arranged as if they were once dwellings, and small man-made caves topped with menhirs taller than the average full-grown man. 

At Lungphunlian, further to the north, are menhirs that bear no engravings but are many times the size of their counterparts elsewhere, the tallest among them rising almost 15 feet tall, with an estimated 5 feet buried in the ground and, at its widest point, measuring 12 feet across and 2 feet thick.

ASI has also found the habitation site. According to them, "...a city belonging to a greater lost civilization might have once existed there." 

Credit: Adam Sapsringsanga and Indian Express.

         : NorthEast Today.

         : mizomegaliths.blogspot.in