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Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c10.s1: 5.1 The Presentation of Inscriptional Texts

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c10.s1

Language
English

Contents

5.1 The Presentation of Inscriptional Texts

5.1.1 Reproduction of the original inscription

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Ideally, an epigraphist should study and edit an inscription from the original stone, copper plate, or other surface on which it is written. In practice, however, this is often not practically feasible, so that the editor must rely on some means of reproduction of the original. Of course, even if one does have access to the original, a reproduction should be made for future use and for publication, since a published edition of an inscription should include a good illustration of the original along with the edited transcript, to enable the readers to check the editor's readings.

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Such reproductions of inscriptions may be in the form of eye copies, mechanical reproductions, or photographic copies. Of the three methods, the eye copy is obviously the least reliable, in that "the eye-witness is recording not so much what is there as what he thought he saw there."¹ Although eye copies were widely employed in early epigraphic publications² such as the early volumes of *JASB* and the Old Series of *ASIR*, they are nowadays rarely used for publication purposes except where physical circumstances prevent the preparation of copies by other methods. Eye copies do, however, still have practical value in that they may be prepared in the field to serve as a check or backup for mechanical or photographic reproductions.

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¹ A. G. Woodhead, *The Study of Greek Inscriptions*, 77.

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² See *EI* 1, 1892, 1.

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Mechanical reproductions usually take the form of "rubbings" of various kinds. (Simple tracings are usually not reliable.) The standard technique in India is to prepare estampages (or "squeezes," as they are known in other fields)³ by affixing wet paper of a suitable thickness (preferably a high-quality paper especially made for the purpose) to the inscribed object after thorough cleaning and beating it firmly with a brush, thereby preparing a cast of the inscription itself. This is then inked in order to bring out contrast (the field appearing dark, the characters white), and the finished product is photographically reproduced for publication.⁴ The advantage of estampages is that they are objective and, if carefully and skillfully prepared, the least subject to distortion of all methods of reproduction. Their chief disadvantage is that it requires considerable skill, time, and material to prepare a good estampage, especially in the case of large inscriptions (such as are common among stone inscriptions in India); this can involve considerable difficulties when, as is often the case, the inscriptions are in situ in remote locations. Rubbings are also not entirely immune to distortion; for instance, it is often difficult to distinguish in an estampage between holes or cracks in the stone and intentionally inscribed marks such as *anusvāra*.

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³ Casts in latex and other substances, sometimes used for the reproduction of inscriptions in other areas of the world (see, e.g., Woodhead, *The Study of Greek Inscriptions*, 80–2), are not generally used in India.

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⁴ IC I.156–7; [Jas. Burgess], “On Copying Inscriptions,” IA 2, 1873, 183–7.

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Photographic reproductions are nowadays somewhat more widely used in Indian epigraphic studies than in past decades, often as a supplement to, rather than a substitute for, mechanical reproduction. Producing a high-quality photograph of an inscription requires considerable skill and professional equipment; once again, these are sometimes difficult to bring to bear in the field, where it is also often difficult or impossible to obtain ideal lighting conditions, natural or artificial. Moreover, photographs of inscriptions, even when expertly prepared, are prone to introduce distortions or optical illusions; for example, it may be easier to distinguish a crack in a stone from an engraved line in an estampage than in a photograph. For these reasons, and also because professional photographic equipment may be difficult to obtain, transport, and use in India, photography remains a secondary method. Ideally, though, an epigraphist would want to prepare both mechanical and photographic reproductions of an inscription, as well as an eye copy, each acting as a check on the other.

5.1.2 Presentation of the edited text

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Indic inscriptions are normally published with a transcribed or transliterated text, either in Roman characters or in one of the modern Indian scripts. Of the latter, Devanāgarī is the standard (except for publications in various regional languages) for Sanskrit and Sanskritic inscriptions, while Dravidian inscriptions are usually published in Roman transliteration or in the modern form of the script used for the language of the inscription (or sometimes in both, as in *Epigraphia Carnatica*).

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The system of Roman transliteration generally used for archaeological and epigraphic publications in India⁵ (e.g., in *Epigraphia Indica* and *Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum*) is essentially the Indian variety (with *ṛi* and *ṛī* instead of *ṛ* and *ṝ*, *ch* and *chh* for *c* and *ch*, and *sh* for *ṣ*) of the standard modern system for Sanskrit and related languages. Special features of this epigraphic transliteration system are that the Sanskrit vowels *e* and *o* are normally noted as long (*ē*, *ō*),⁶ and that special symbols for the *jihvāmūlīya* and *upadhmānīya* varieties of *visarga* (*ẖ*, *ḫ*) are used when represented as such in Sanskrit inscriptions.⁷

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⁵ In this book, as in epigraphic studies published in the West generally, the standard modern European transliteration system for general Indology has been followed, rather than the epigraphically modified Indian system.

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⁶ This is done because the system is intended to serve not only for Indo-Aryan but also for Dravidian inscriptions, in which *e* and *o* are sometimes graphically distinguished for length. The distinction is, however, superfluous for Sanskritic inscriptions; thus, e.g., Sircar disregards it in SI (I.xvi).

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Punctuation marks, insofar as they are present in the original inscription scription must give careful thought to the degree of correction and standardization to be imposed on an宝石 inscriptional text, and when in doubt should leave the text as it stands.