Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.3

c11.3

The first publication of an old Indian inscription was by the “Sanscrit-mad”³ (Sir) Charles Wilkins (1749–1836),⁴ one of the greatest of the pioneer Indologists, in his article “A Royal Grant of Land, Engraved on a Copper Plate, Bearing Date Twenty-three Years Before Christ; and Discovered Among the Ruins at Mongueer. Translated from the Original Sanscrit, by Charles Wilkins, Esq. in the Year 1781,”⁵ in *Asiatick Researches* (AR) 1 (1788), 123–30.⁶ This was followed by “An Inscription on a Pillar near Buddal” in AR 1, 131–41.⁷ These articles, like most of the earliest epigraphic papers published in AR, consist only of translations, without the text of the inscription and with little or no introductory matter. Both of Wilkins’ inscriptions date from the Pāla period, about the ninth century A.D.; although decidedly archaic, the script of these two epigraphs could be read by comparisons to the modern and archaic forms of Devanāgarī and Bengali scripts known in Wilkins’ time,⁸ and he was thus able to produce interpretations of the inscriptions which were substantially accurate, though by no means correct in all points. His estimate of the age of these inscriptions, however, was off by nearly a millennium, because he interpreted the date *saṃvat* 33 of the Muṅgir inscription as a year of the Vikrama era equivalent to 23 B.C., whereas in fact it is a regnal year of Devapāladeva, who ruled in the first half of the ninth century.