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Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.s1.t2: 6.2.3 Other developments during the era of decipherment

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.s1.t2

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6.2.3 Other developments during the era of decipherment

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After the pioneering works of Prinsep and Norris, further progress in the study of the Aśokan inscriptions continued at a slow but steady pace in the fifth and sixth decades of the nineteenth century. The Bairāṭ (or Bhābrā, Calcutta-Bairāṭ, etc.; see 4.3.1.1.2 n. 69) rock inscription, discovered by T. S. Burt in 1840 and published by M. Kittoe in the same year,⁹⁰ was the first known example of the separate or minor rock edicts. In 1850⁹¹ H. H. Wilson published a detailed study with synoptic texts of the fourteen rock edicts in the three versions then known, namely, Girnār, Dhauli, and Kapur-di-Giri (i.e., Shāhbāzgaṛhī). Though far from authoritative, Wilson's edition represents a major step in the reading and understanding of the Aśokan inscriptions.⁹² Several of the Aśokan edicts known at the time were also published by Eugène Burnouf in Appendix 10 of *Le Lotus de la bonne loi*.⁹³

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⁹⁰ JASB 9, 616–9.

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⁹¹ JRAS 12, 153–251.

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⁹² Despite his superior understanding of the text, however, Wilson (op. cit., 234–51) still refused to accept Turnour's identification of King Piyadassi of the inscriptions with Aśoka of the Ceylonese Pāli tradition. But he did at least retract his arguments against the Buddhist character of the inscriptions in his revised edition of the Bairāṭ inscription in JRAS 16, 1856, 357–67.

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⁹³ Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1852.

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During the same period progress also continued to be made in the study of the Kharoṣṭhī script and the inscriptions written therein. An important discovery was the biscript Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī inscription from Kanihiāra, first published by E. C. Bayley in 1854⁹⁴ and reedited by Edward Thomas in 1858 in his edition of Prinsep's *Essays on Indian Antiquities* (I.159–61). Among his extensive additions to Prinsep's articles in the same work, Thomas provided facsimiles and transcriptions of a few other Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions, including the Māṇikiāla stone inscription (I.143–6), the Bīmarān reliquary (I.105–9), and the Wardak vase (I.161–5), as well as a “Review of the Bactrian Alphabet” (II.144–67); the accompanying plate XI (facing page 166) summarizes the Kharoṣṭhī script as then known, with minor improvements in detail on what had been presented by Norris in 1846.

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⁹⁴ JASB 23, 57–9.

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In tive, mainly because he did not realize that the system involved was additive, rather than place-value as in later numerical notation (2.4.1.3); he therefore arrived at several wrong readings, interpreting, for example, the symbol for 300 as 3. Edward Thomas in 1850¹⁰¹ was the first to correctly recognize the additive nature of the system, that is, that "the figures employed were incapable of ... attaining any accession of power from relative position" (33), and he further explicated it in 1855 in his article on "Ancient Indian Numerals."¹⁰² Important supplementary information on this subject was gathered from the Nāsik inscriptions, which contain many dates and other numbers written in numerical symbols; this enabled J. Stevenson in 1853¹⁰³ to correctly identify the hitherto unknown figures for 10 and 20 and to recognize the basic character for 1,000, although he did not correctly interpret its various combinations. From this material, Thomas was able to publish an essentially accurate table of the early Brāhmī numbers in his edition of Prinsep's *Essays on Indian Antiquities*, plate XLa (facing page 84). Further advances were added in 1862¹⁰⁴ by Bhau Daji,¹⁰⁵ who gave a nearly complete chart of the system (231), and in 1877 by Bhagvānlāl Indrajī,¹⁰⁶ who clarified the values of the remaining problematic signs.

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¹⁰¹ "On the Dynasty of the Sáh Kings of Suráshtra," *JRAS* 12, 27–47.

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¹⁰² *JASB* 24, 551–71. See also his editorial notes in Prinsep's *Essays on Indian Antiquities*, II.80–4.

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¹⁰³ "On the Násik Cave-Inscriptions," *JBBRAS* 5, 35–57; see esp. fig. 18.

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¹⁰⁴ "The Ancient Sanskrit Numerals in the Cave Inscriptions, and on the Sah-Coins, Correctly Made Out," *JBBRAS* 8, 1863–66, 225–33.

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¹⁰⁵ But according to Bühler, "the results of [this] article belong chiefly to Bhagvānlāl Indrājī, though his name is not mentioned" (BIP 77 n. 5).

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¹⁰⁶ "On the Ancient Nāgarī Numerals," *IA* 6, 42–8.

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The first edition of Christian Lassen's *Indische Alterthumskunde* (1847–62) marked the first comprehensive effort at incorporating epigraphic evidence into a study of ancient Indian political and cultural history. In II.44 Lassen discussed the function and significance of inscriptions in a study of this type, following the famous remarks of Colebrooke quoted earlier (p. 202). Lassen's work set the pattern for future studies of early Indian history, with its heavy reliance on epigraphic and numismatic sources.

Cites (2)