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Discuss different types of Megalithic burial practices in India. How far does the archaeological evidence from it help us to know the religious beliefs and cultural practices?

  • UPSC 2024
  • Megalithic Cultures

Almost everything known about India's Iron Age megalithic communities comes not from their houses but from their graves — deliberately elaborate, durable structures raised away from the habitation area, chiefly across the Deccan and far south but also in Vidarbha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Kashmir and the Northeast. That the evidence is almost entirely funerary is…

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What the full answer covers

  • Typology of Megalithic Burial Practices
  • What the Evidence Reveals About Religious Beliefs
  • Belief in an Afterlife and the Cult of the Dead
  • Ancestor Worship and Public Commemoration
  • Animism
  • Secondary Burial and a Layered Ritual of Death
  • …and 2 more sections, with a conclusion

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