Only a hundred miles from London, in the middle of the Salisbury Plain, I had stood at Stonehenge, the megalithic remains of ancient stone circles.

Looking sombrely above me were those seven- foot thick huge grey stones rising twentyeight feet above the bare ground. The December cold in Wiltshire was biting, and some brown grass on the plain was stiff with ice as the predawn dew had frozen on the blades.

Pliny, the ancient historian had said: "Stonehenge…is a place of…monstrous and abominable arts…(and) murdered men." The circular form of the monument has suggested to some that it was connected with sun worship. Some said it is a martial court of justice, a shrine to Buddha, a temple of serpent worship, and a monument to victory.

The first rays of the sun went through an aperture in the trilithons. My young Welsh friend described to me how it is in the summer.

On Midsummer's Day (June 21) these rays go through the aperture and land directly on the Heel Stone! Tourists who come to watch this phenomenon then also see the ceremony that the druids perform: hooded grey figures walk slowly toward the gaunt irregular stones and they make no sound. Re-enacted after hundreds of years, they would be scary!

The druids' religious practices, some have said, were of the Hindus! "I bet you know all about them," my friend joked, "there are such circles in Jaipur."

A slight slope took me to the stones, sometimes called "the hanging stones'" because they seem suspended. A legend by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1139 has it that King Arthur's uncle Aurelianus wanted to make a monument to his 460 brave nobles slain by a treacherous Saxon and so recruited a magician, Merlin, to move them from Ireland.

Merlin may not have needed to use magic tricks to move the stones. But once at site, how did he place the huge 30-ton lintels across the upright stones? Without modern equipment, how were the huge lintels put across the tops? Even before placing these massive lintels across the tops, how did they manage to get the huge stones upright at all?

One such was called the Slaughter Stone and locals say that it was for human sacrifice. Shivering in that icy December day in England, clad complete with mittens and earmuffs, I felt the concept of human sacrifice out of place, incongruous. Druids of today are convinced, though, that these massive stones are placed for their ceremonies.

Archaeologists and historians raised many questions. Does Stonehenge as a concept have a deeper meaning and significance? Was it a site for ancient worship? If so, could it have been animal and even human sacrifice? Burial grounds are indeed nearby, and bones have been found in abundance. Inigo Jones said, in 1622, that there were sacrifices of "Buls…and oxen…" in ancient times.

Why this place and why the exact positions of these huge rocks? And scientists tried for answers. Perhaps the stones were placed only for the advent of the sun at the time of the summer solstice, on Midsummer's Day. But their positions have no apparent significance for sunsets and moonrises and moonsets.

The stones are in a complete circle so how can they be necessary just for the sunrise? The riddle of the origin of these stones was finally solved by Britain's Gerald S. Hawkins, who, in his book, "Stonehenge Decoded", explains it all convincingly. With computers, with the help of a U.S. university, with modern science techniques, the spectacular solution to the reason of the stones was offered: it is do with astronomy.

Radioactive carbon testing established the stones were brought to Salisbury Plain in 1600 B.C., i.e. the Bronze Age! Computers and reams of mathematics and astronomical sighting and calculation of star, sun and moon positions in 1600 B.C. revealed that the fascinating and impressive positions of these stones were for astronomical prediction of sun and moon, summer and winter solstices, eclipses. The predictions were probably used for planting, sowing and reaping, for vital crops.

These extrapolations back to 1600 B.C. were followed by updated shots with cameras and modern instruments to conclusively prove astronomical basis of the stones of Stonehenge. Photographs show the rays of the sun and the moon flashing through apertures in the stones – exactly as predicted!

But the fact remains that there are burial grounds nearby. Perhaps the astronomical computer was also a convenient spot for bones and for religious and sacrificial ceremonies. And so the druids will come again on Midsummer Day (June 21), brooding in their re-enactment of ancient ceremony, and they will bring tourists from all over the world, who will gasp as they watch the first flash of the sun through an aperture in the trilithons and the rays will land directly on the Heel Stone.