Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.23

c11.23

The first six volumes of AR (1788–99) contained, besides the papers already noted, a few more articles translating, describing, and/or illustrating old inscriptions, by Wilkins,¹⁶ Rādhākānta,¹⁷ Jones,¹⁸ and several others. These early contributions included the first publication of a copper plate grant by "Rámalóchan Pandit,"¹⁹ who was also one of Jones' *paṇḍitas*. But the next momentous contributions were those of the great early Indologist Henry T. Colebrooke (1765–1837). His first epigraphic paper was the "Translation of One of the Inscriptions on the Pillar at Dehlee, Called the Lāt of Feerōz Shah" (AR 7, 1801, 175–82), in which he retranslated the inscription of the Cāhamāna king Vigrahapāla (on the Delhi-Toprā Aśokan pillar) which had previously been translated "as explained by Rádhácánta Sarman" in AR 1 (see n. 17). This article made three major contributions to the study of epigraphy. First, Colebrooke correctly interpreted the date (Vikrama 1220 = A.D. 1164), which had been wrongly read by Rādhākānta as 123. Second, he provided an accurate transliterated text of the inscription, together with a facsimile reproduction; this constituted a major methodological advance and set the pattern for epigraphic publications ever since. Third, he also included complete and reliable facsimiles of the Aśokan inscriptions on the same pillar; and although he made no progress toward interpreting these, he thereby brought them to the attention of and made them available to the scholarly public, laying the groundwork for their decipherment some thirty-five years later.