Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3: Introduction
Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3
- Language
- English
Contents
- c3.3 — 3 parts
Introduction
c3.1
I trust that this elementary sketch of South-Indian Palæography may supply a want long felt by those who are desirous of investigating the *real* history of the peninsula of India.
c3.2
From the beginning of this century (when Buchanan executed the only archæological survey that has ever been done in even a part of the South of India) up to the present time, a number of well meaning persons have gone about with much simplicity and faith collecting a mass of rubbish which they term traditions and accept as history. There is some excuse for Buchanan, but none for his followers; the persistent retailing of this "lying gabble" (as Genl. Cunningham aptly terms it) has well-nigh ruined the progress of Indian research, and caused the utter neglect of a subject that evidently promises much[^1). The Vedic literature will always remain the most attractive object of
c3.3.1
[^1): It must be obvious that these traditions are merely attempts at explanations of the unknown through current ideas, which in S. India amount to the merest elements of Hindu mythology as gathered from third-rate sources. Mouhot the illustrious discoverer of the Cambodian temples, though a naturalist and not an archæologist, saw this very plainly. He says ("Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China", vol. ii. pp. 8, 9): "All traditions being lost, the natives invent new ones, according to the measure of their capacity." The Māhātmyas are equally worthless with the oral legends, for they are modern compositions (mostly later than the 10th century A. D.) intended to connect particular places with events entirely mythical and belonging to modern or even foreign religious systems. How worthless tradition is in S. India, a few examples will easily prove. The chain of rocks from India to Ceylon is (as is well known) connected with the myth of Rāma's conquest of Laṅkā, but this localization of the mythical event must be quite recent; for, *firstly*, whatever may be the age of the Rāmāyaṇa, the worship of Rāma is quite modern. *Again*, had there been any such myth current in the place during the early centuries A. D., we might expect something about it in the Periplus or Ptolemy, especially as the former gives the legend then current about Cape Comorin; but there is nothing of the kind to be found. *Lastly*, there is nothing whatever (Mr.
c3.3.2
D'Alwis assures us) known of the legend in Ceylon. Again, the localization of the events of the Mahābhārata is endless; every few miles in S. India one can find the place where some battle or other event occurred, and so it is also in Java. Such legends, therefore, are absolutely worthless, for they prove no more than that the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa are or were favourite stories over a large part of the East. But the traditional practice in respect of study in relation to India, but there is much besides to be studied. The history of Indian civilization does not cease (as some appear to think) with the early period of Buddhism. About the early centuries of the Christian era, we find the Buddhist-Brahmanical civilization extending from its home in the North over alien races inhabiting the peninsula of India, and in the course of some few centuries it had already extended over Burmah, the Malay Islands, and even to the forests and swamps of Cambodia. But this immense progress was not a mere reception of stereotyped forms and opinions by uncivilized peoples; it was on the contrary (and herein lies the interest of the subject) a gradual adaptation¹ to circumstances, including the creation of national literatures in many languages, which were then first reduced to writing and system. In South-India, at all events, new sects rapidly arose, which have reacted powerfully on Northern India.
c3.3.3
Books containing the various religious opinions that have prevailed more or less in these Hinduized, or rather Brahmanized, countries, are yet easily accessible; but the chronological framework is almost entirely wanting, and this can only be supplied from the inscriptions still existing in large numbers. If an outline of the historical events of the last fifteen centuries of South-Indian history could be gained from these inscriptions, the wearisome dry dogmatic treatises would begin to possess some human interest, and the faint outlines of a long obliterated picture would reappear; faintly at first, but with time and patient research, they would (like fossils in the hands of the geologist) present a living picture of a past, if not attractive, at all events strange. The prospect of such a result should tempt the few European students of Sanskrit in South-India who at present, in the hope of learning something of Indian matters, devote their attention to mechanical poems which repeat themselves with "most damnable iteration," or to plays composed by pedants during the worst times of India. This real history of South-India can only be gathered from inscriptions.
c3.4
ceremonies is worth little more, though in this case religious prejudices can hardly interfere. Thus for the Soma many different plants are used. The Brahmans on the Coromandel Coast take the '*Asclepias Acida*', those of Malabar the '*Ceropegia Decaisneana*' or '*Ceropegia Elegans*'. How different in appearance these three plants are, may be readily seen by a comparison of the figures of them given by Wight in his "Icones" ii., 595 ("Ascl. Acida") and his "Spicilegium Neilgherriense" pl. 152 and 155. (The Parsees must originally have used the same plant as the Brahmans did, now they use quite a different one. *cfr.* Haug's "Essays", p. 239). Which then, if any of them, is the original Soma? And this loss of tradition must (apart from the obvious development of rites) have begun very early; for otherwise, it is impossible to account for the variations in the details of the same ceremony as described, *e. g.* by the different Çrautasūtras. Thus we find, in the Cayanas, that Āpastamba directs the construction of the altars in a different way to that prescribed by Bodhāyana. So again the great difference in the way of uttering the Vedic accents and the singing of the Sāma Veda, must strike every one who hears them. These differences, at all events, cannot be original; for they occur among followers of the same Çākhā of the Veda. The Açoka tree of S. India is the '*Guatteria longifolia*'; that of the North, the '*Jonesia açoka*'. Tradition is worthless all over the East in exactly the same way. Once, when crossing in a boat from the Nubian bank of the Nile to the temple of Philae, I asked the native boatman what he knew of the temple? He replied directly: "It is the Castle of Ans Alwujūd". This personage is the hero of a popular Arabic fairy-tale! Had the boatman been a native of India, he would have answered: "Rāma's (or the Pāṇḍava's) palace", and backed up his story with an endless legend. What I have here said about the worthlessness of local traditions in the East has been, long ago, asserted in respect of other countries. See, *e. g.* Volney, "Egypt and Syria" (Engl. transl. of 1788) ii., p. 243. Von Hahn, "Sagwissenschaftliche Studien", pp. 58 ffg. F. W. Ellis wrote, about sixty years ago, of "the mist of fiction with which the Indians contrive to envelop every historical fact", but not even his recognized authority seems to have had much effect, as yet.
c3.5
¹ *Cfr.* W. von Humboldt's remarks on the Kawi (old Javanese) literature in his treatise on the Kawi language. ii. p. 4.
c3.6
A manual of Palæography like the one I have here attempted has a double object in view—to trace the gradual development of writing by means of documents of known date, and thus, also, to render it possible to assign a date to the larger number of documents which do not bear any. For this purpose I have given a chronological series of alphabets traced (with few exceptions)1) from impressions of the original documents; these are by no means perfect, as I have selected only the most usual letters, as these alone can assist in determining the date. Unusual letters are often formed after analogy or capriciously, and thus have, in Indian Palæography, but little value.
c3.7
1) Plates xii., xiii., xviii. and xix.
c3.8
Indian, and even South-Indian Palæography is hardly a new subject, though much that is really new will, I believe, be found in the following pages, which were originally intended to form part of an introduction to a Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS. in the Palace of Tanjore, now in the press. As, however, I found that that work would necessarily be of considerable size, I have preferred to publish these pages separately. The foundations of Indian Palæography were laid by J. Prinsep some forty years ago2), when he showed that the Indian alphabets then known to him were probably derived from the S. Açoka character which he first deciphered; since then, little or nothing has been done except Sir W. Elliot's lithographic reproduction of the Haḷa Kannaḍa alphabet, at Bombay about 18363). Dr. Babington had already given an old Tamiḻ alphabet4), and Harkness republished both with some unimportant additions5). The materials I have used have been collected by myself during several years, and in very different parts of the country, and are (I have every reason to believe) fairly complete.
c3.9
2) *Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal*, vi., pl. xiii.
c3.10
3) The only copy I have seen had no title, hence I cannot give the exact date.
c3.11
4) Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, ii., pl. xiii.
c3.12
5) London, 1837. ("Ancient and Modern Hindu Alphabets", by Capt. H. Harkness 37 pp.)
c3.13
Many attempts have been made by Mackenzie, Sir W. Elliot, Mr. C. P. Brown, Mr. H. J. Stokes and others to collect the inscriptions of South-India; but, though the importance of this work has been often acknowledged, few results have followed, as no individual (except perhaps Sir W. Elliot) could hope to be able to finish such a task. When the greater part of the plates and text that follow were already printed (between one and two years ago), this important subject was still viewed with indifference; since then, the *Indian Antiquary* in Bombay, and the labours of Profr. Kern at Leiden and Profr. Eggeling in London raise hopes that will not be disappointed. The treatment of parts of the Açoka edicts by the former¹ marks the epoch of a real scientific study of Indian inscriptions, and his knowledge of Indian antiquities and ways of thought has cleared up what seemed likely to remain for ever obscure. Profr. Eggeling is the first to publish the W. Cālukya documents, and to show what they really mean. But the subjects of these researches present many difficulties. If South-Indian inscriptions present comparatively few puzzles, so far as the characters used are considered, they can only be satisfactorily explained by a knowledge of Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages which rests upon a more certain foundation than is now usual. If the absence of notes and abbreviations render transcription easy and certain, there is much in the language of the documents that will create serious difficulties. The earliest and most important grants for historical purposes are nearly all in Sanskrit, but the scribes were seldom content with leaving the names of places untranslated, and to restore these names to their Dravidian forms, and thus render identification possible, is often a task beset with difficulties². A large number of documents are in Canarese and Tamil, but as the orthography fluctuated, and the vocabularies of these languages have been but little studied in a scientific spirit, it is not too much to say that not a single early inscription in either of these languages has as yet been explained in a perfectly satisfactory manner¹). These documents contain the earliest specimens of the Dravidian languages (beyond single words), that we possess; they are, therefore, of capital importance for the comparative study of the South-Indian dialects, but have not as yet been used at all, except by Dr. Gundert.
c3.14
¹ "Over de Jaartelling der Zuidelijke Buddhisten", 4° Amsterdam, 1873.
c3.15
² The Sanskritizing of Dravidian names by official scribes seems to have happened in the following ways: *A. Alteration of the whole name.* 1. *Correct translation. e. g.* Tālavṛinda=Paṉaikkāḍu; Vaṭāraṇya. 2. *Mis-translations. e. g.* Bālā(puri)=Kŏčči (Cochin); Kāñci(pura)=Kañji (Conjeveram). *B. Partial translation of the last part of a compound word, and which* = town, village, mountain, etc. *e. g.* Koṅkaṇapura=Koṅkaṇa-haḷḷi or rather Koṅkaṇi-haḷḷi; Kolācala=? Golkoṇḍa. *C. Mythological perversions of Dravidian names the meaning of which was early lost. e. g.* Pāṇḍiyan into Pāṇḍya, hence derived from Pāṇḍu; Rāshtra from Raṭṭa=Reḍḍi; Tañjāvūr; Mahābalipura from Māmallaipura; Çrībali from Çivaḷḷi. Such perversions are generally intended to localize the N. Indian mythology. *D. Substitution of an entirely new name, the first part of which is the name of the God worshipped, and the second part* sthala *or some equivalent word.* I hope some time to be able to bring out a map of S. India in which all such names will be entered, as far as I have been able to identify them.
c3.16
¹ Dr. Gundert’s labours on Malayāḷam, and more recently, those of Mr. Kittel on Canarese will soon remove this obstacle; a really good Tamiḷ Dictionary is yet, however, to be written. The best now existing is that printed at Pondicherry in 2 vols. 8° (“Par deux missionaires Apostoliques”).
c3.17
These grants will again by their local irregularities of spelling throw great light on the history of the literary dialects of those languages, and especially of Canarese and Telugu. It is certain that the earliest literary culture in the Deccan was purely Sanskritic, and that compositions in the vernacular (except in Tamiḷ) scarcely existed before the 10th century A. D.; but these were always artificial to the last degree, and contained Sanskrit words in profusion, they were in short Kāvyas²); hence for specimens of the language as actually used we must depend on the earlier inscriptions. The Tamiḷ literature has also fallen under Sanskrit influences, but to a less degree; yet as it is scarcely probable that the grammarians had ended their work at the date of the earliest documents, these will furnish important information illustrating the history of the language.
c3.18
² *Cfr.* Āndhraçabdacintāmaṇi, i., 1. “Viçvaçreyaḥ kāvyam” which sūtra gives the object of the work. The analogy between the South-Indian artificial poems in the Dravidian languages and those in the old Javanese called Kawi is complete, and there can be no doubt that the last thus got their name. All these compositions are, more or less, macaronic verses.
c3.19
I have thus briefly pointed out what we may hope to gain by a study of the South-Indian inscriptions, and, to all aware of the utter uncertainty attending all Indian researches, the prospect must be a very attractive one. But there are many difficulties, as I have also pointed out, and there is one obstacle that I must not omit to notice. From the beginning, Indian studies have been infected by a spirit of vague sentimentalism, the cause of which it is difficult to find, and which has reasonably caused prudent enquirers to doubt the value of much that has been done. To all students of Indian literature one can only repeat the words of advice addressed by M. Chabas to the Assyriologists: “Nous invitons les assyriologues sérieux à pousser de leur côté le cri d’alarme, et à maintenir leur science au-dessus de la portée des enthousiastes qui en abusent"¹). If an eminent Egyptologist finds it necessary to address his cautious fellow-labourers in this manner, how much more does the warning apply to Indianists? If Egypt and Assyria present merely ruins and broken fragments, these are at least real, whereas Indian literature is, mostly, but a fata-morgana of ruins that have disappeared ages ago.
c3.20
¹ Etudes sur l'Antiquité historique d'après les sources Egyptiennes'', 2nd ed., p. 128.
c3.21
I owe my best thanks to the Rev. G. Richter of Mercara for a loan of the Cera grant in his possession. To the Rev. F. Kittel I owe many important references and suggestions, as will be seen by the text and notes. The Basel Mission Press at Mangalore has spared no pains to bring out this Monograph in a complete form; and I am especially indebted to my friend Mr. C. Stolz and the other authorities there for the trouble they have taken, I hope, not in vain.
Linked texts (1)
- Sāmavedasaṃhitā — Sanskrit