Konnur
Konnur, 1908
(the Kondamiru of inscriptions). — Village in the Gokak of Belgaum District, Bombay, situated in 16 degree 11' N. and 74 degree 45' E., on the Ghatprabha river, about 5 miles north-west of Gokak. Population (1901), 5,667. It contains a boys' school with 81 pupils. Near the Gokak Falls on the Ghatprabha, within the limits of Konnur village, are several ruined temples of about the eleventh century. To the south, close to the foot of some sandstone hills, are a number of the slab-walled and slab-roofed cell-tombs or kistvaens which have been found near Hyderabad in the Deccan and in other parts of Southern India, and which have a special interest from their likeness to the old stone chambers in England. The most interesting feature is a group of fifty more or less perfect rooms. All the stone slabs used as walls and roofs are of the neighbouring quartzite sandstone. They show no signs of tooling, but seem to have been roughly broken into shape. The cell or kistvaen is formed of six slabs of fiat unhewn stone. From an opening in the south face a small passage is usually carried at right angles to the chamber. Over each cell-tomb a cairn of small stones and earth seems originally to have been piled, probably forming a semi-spherical or domed mound about 8 feet high. In almost every case remains of these mounds or covers are seen. Many of the chambers are ruined, and of some only a few 7 stones are left, the large slabs having probably been taken for building. Some of the better-preserved chambers were surrounded by a square rough-hewn stone kerb, which in some instances is in fair order. This kerb was probably a plinth on which the covering mound rested, which in some cases seems to have been carefully built of rough stone boulders set in mud. An examination of the magnetic bearing of the axes of these chambers showed that of forty-eight chambers in the main group the axes of ten pointed due north, of thirty-two pointed west of north, in one case as much as 34 west, but most were much nearer north than west. The remaining six pointed east of north, one as much as 27 east and the rest only a few degrees east. The people call these erections ' Pandavas' houses,' and say the Pandavas built them as shelters. The complete or almost complete weathering away of the mounds of earth and stones which originally covered these burial- rooms shows that they must be of great age. As konne is the Kanarese for ' room ' and urn for ' village,' it seems probable that the village takes its name from its cell-tombs or burial-rooms, and that Konnur means ' the room-village.' One of the most perfect tombs contained fragments of a human tooth and bones, and some pieces of pottery.
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts. Some units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
