“Possibly, the tallest stone was erected for someone important in the clan, and the rest were added for other members over a few generations. The site progressively became a marketplace, and the stone slabs were used as stalls to display and sell wares or to sit on and rest,” he mentioned.

The monoliths continued to play an necessary position in Jaintia society, even after the dominion started to lose its energy with the appearance of colonial rule.

In the early 1800s, after establishing its foothold in Bengal, the British East India Company was desperate to develop its land income areas. They started exploring areas farther east and came across the Jaintiapur kingdom in Sylhet. In their makes an attempt to achieve management of the territory, the British exiled the Jaintiapur raja (king) to the hills within the north in 1835. The raja selected his summer season capital Nartiang deep within the northern hills as his new seat of energy and continued his political affairs from there.

“Nartiang’s political importance grew once the Jaintia king was forced to abdicate his seat in the Sylhet plains. The area with the monoliths too gained prominence for different activities, such as the coronation of rajas or for conducting judicial and administrative deliberation,” mentioned Dr Reeju Ray, a historian and creator of Placing the Frontier in British North-East India. “It thus appears that the Nartiang monoliths may have had some political significance too.”

Even although the folktales surrounding the Nartiang monoliths sound fantastical, it is evident that these constructions served actual functions by way of the ages.

“There is a certain overlap of myth and memory in the case of the Nartiang monoliths. The locals’ account of how the place came to be is based in myth or folklore. But they also remember it for the purpose it served their ancestors – as a weekly marketplace, a memorial, a place for political gatherings. That is how oral history works, it blends fact and fiction into collective memory,” Ray mentioned.

Today, the Nartiang monoliths serve no function besides to face as towering relics from a time passed by. Detailed archaeological work is but to be carried out to discover the precise whys and hows of the location. Even although the folklore and extra substantiated historic accounts provide some perception to the location, the thriller of the stoic stone giants lingers on.

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