 Further down in one of them he found the stump of a tree.His conclusions were that the earthen barrows had some connection with the funeral rites of the people who erected them, and he found an explanation of the phenomena encountered by him in the rites of cremation and post-cremation prescribed in the Vedas.On the basis of this hypothesis he identified the gold female figurine as the earth goddess Prithvi and ascribed the mounds to a pre-Mauryan age.