*By this name all the Imperial tombs were called. According to the Chronicles, incidents so shocking occurred in connexion with the sacrifice of the personal attendants* of Prince Yamato at his burial (A.D. 2) that the custom of making such sacrifices was thenceforth abandoned, clay images being substituted for human beings. The Records speak of a "hedge of men set up round a tumulus," and it would therefore seem that these terracotta figures usually found encircling the principal misasagi, represented that hedge and served originally as pedestals for images. Within the dolmen, also, clay effigies are often found, which appear to have been substitutes for retainers of high rank. Had the ancient custom been effectually abolished in the year A.D. 3, when the Emperor Suinin is recorded to have issued orders in that sense, a simple and conclusive means would be at hand for fixing the approximate date of a dolmen, since all tombs containing clay effigies or encircled by terracotta haniwa would necessarily be subsequent to that date, and all tombs containing skeletons other than the occupants of the sarcophagi would be referable to an earlier era. But although compulsory sacrifices appear to have ceased from about the first century of the Christian era, it is certain that voluntary sacrifices continued through many subsequent ages. This clue is therefore illusory. Neither does the custom itself serve to connect the Yamato with any special race, for it is a wide-spread rite of animistic religion, and it was practised from time immemorial by the Chinese, the Manchu Tatars, and many other nations of northeastern Asia. *They are said to have been buried upright in the precincts of the misasagi. "For several days they died not, but wept and wailed day and night. At last they died and rotted. Dogs and crows gathered and ate them." (Chronicles. Aston's translation.) The substitution of images for living beings, however, appears to have been a direct outcome of contact with China, for the device was known there as early as the seventh century before Christ. It would seem, too, from the researches of a learned Japanese archaeologist (Professor Miyake), that the resemblance between Japanese and Chinese burial customs was not limited to this substitution. The dolmen also existed in China in very early times, but had been replaced by a chamber of finished masonry not later than the ninth century B.C. In the Korean peninsula the dolmen with a megalithic roof is not uncommon, and the sepulchral pottery bears a close resemblance to that of the Yamato tombs. It was at one time supposed that the highly specialized form of dolmen found in Japan had no counterpart anywhere on the continent of Asia, but that supposition has proved erroneous.