Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c6: 1 The Scope and Significance of Epigraphy in Indological Studies
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c6
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1 The Scope and Significance of Epigraphy in Indological Studies
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Though it has been frequently stated, the importance of epigraphy in Indology can hardly be overemphasized. The primary reason for the particular importance of epigraphy in the study of traditional India (as compared, e.g., with that of classical Europe or China) is the extreme paucity, especially in the ancient period, of the type of historical data from literary sources which is available for other major civilizations of the ancient and medieval world. This situation is a reflection of what might be called the "ahistorical" orientation of traditional Indian culture. Traditional India, with its strongly idealistic and theoretical orientation, had little interest in what we in the modern world think of as "history," and except for a few outstanding exceptions Sanskrit and classical literature include little in the way of "historical" texts in the stricter sense of the term. As a result, the history of ancient and early medieval (i.e., pre-Islamic) India must for the most part be reconstructed from incidental sources; that is, sources whose original intent was something other than the recording of historical events as such. Such sources include many branches of literature, both secular and religious, but these typically give us little more than tantalizing tidbits of historical information, often distorted, and out of context at that. Far more revealing are the archaeological sources, including not only the results of formal stratigraphic excavations but also numismatic and above all epigraphic materials.
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It has been authoritatively estimated¹ that something like 80 percent of our knowledge of the history of India before about A.D. 1000 is derived from inscriptional sources.² Without inscriptions, for example, we would have only the vaguest notion of the history of the Gupta dynasty, the greatest northern Indian empire of the classical period. But the importance of epigraphy goes beyond historical studies in the narrower sense of the term, that is, political history. The modern study of most aspects of the cultural history of traditional India, such as the arts, literature, religion, and language, are also heavily indebted to inscriptions for their basic chronological and geographical framework. Again reflecting the non-historical orientation of traditional Indian culture as a whole, traditional literary and cultural relics typically seem to exist in a chronological vacuum; for example, the date of original composition of literary texts, especially in the earlier centuries, is rarely recorded in the works themselves (although later manuscript copies are often dated). Thus the dates and even the relative chronologies of major cultural developments are often uncertain or totally unknown. But here again inscriptional material, with its vast volume and diversity of contents, frequently comes to the rescue. In the history of literature, for example, inscriptional allusions to and imitations of great classical poets, as well as original compositions preserved in epigraphic form, provide a bedrock of evidence for the chronological development of Sanskrit poetic literature.³ The same holds true, to a greater or lesser extent, for nearly all branches of Indology;⁴ in the words of D. C. Sircar, “there is no aspect of the life, culture and activities of the Indians that is not reflected in inscriptions.”⁵ Thus epigraphic materials, directly or indirectly, provide almost the only solid chronological foundation for modern historically oriented studies. This is true primarily because inscriptions, unlike literary sources, which almost always come to us only after being copied and recopied through the centuries, are inherently datable, either by an explicit date or by paleographic estimate.⁶ A reference to a particular legal principle, religious sect, philosopher, poet, and so on, in an inscription thus gives at least an approximate terminus ante quem for a person or event whose date might otherwise (i.e., from literary sources alone) be impossible to determine even in the broadest estimate.
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¹ D. C. Sircar, EINES 91.
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² For further details, see section 7.1.
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³ For further discussion, see section 7.2.
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⁴ For examples and details, see sections 7.3–7.
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⁵ EINES 102.
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⁶ See section 5.4.
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It is mainly for these reasons that epigraphy is a primary rather than a secondary subfield within Indology. Whereas in classical studies or Sinology, for example, epigraphy serves mainly as a corroborative and supplementary source to historical studies based mainly on textual sources, in India the situation is precisely the opposite. There, history is built upon a skeleton reconstructed principally from inscriptions, while literary and other sources usually serve only to add some scraps of flesh here and there to the bare bones. There are, of course, some exceptions to the rule, most notably in Kashmir, where unlike nearly everywhere else in India a sophisticated tradition of historical writing flourished, best exemplified by Kalhaṇa’s *Rājataranginī*. Nonetheless, the general pattern remains essentially valid for political, and to a lesser extent for cultural, history.⁷
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⁷ In this respect, the study of the history of traditional India is methodologically more comparable to the study of the early urbanized cultures such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, for which the principal sources are epigraphic rather than literary, rather than to that of the contemporary classical cultures of Europe and the Near and Far East.
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The paucity of historical materials in the usual sense for India is balanced, as it were, by the relative abundance of inscriptions.⁸ According to Sircar, “About 90,000 inscriptions have so far been discovered in different parts of India.”⁹ These estimated 90,000 inscriptions come from virtually every corner of India and from every century from the third (or possibly fourth) century B.C. up to modern times, though their distribution is by no means equal in terms of antiquity and geographical and linguistic distribution. For example, early inscriptions, that is, those from before about the beginning of the Christian era are relatively rare, and inscriptions only become very common in medieval times, from about the eighth century onward. In general, the bulk of inscriptions in the later period are from southern India and the majority of these are in Dravidian languages.¹⁰
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⁸ The abundance of inscriptions in India may be attributed, in part at least, to the desire of the issuing authorities to preserve their records in a form which would survive the rigors of the Indian climate, where documents on perishable materials such as palm leaves or paper tend not to last more than a few generations. In particular, the widespread practice of recording land grants and other transactions on copper plates seems to reflect such concerns (see section 4.1.2).
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⁹ EINES 91. It has recently been estimated that some 58,000 Indian inscriptions have been published (R. Garbini, JESI 19, 1993, 64).
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¹⁰ According to Sircar (EINES 91), “the largest numbers come from the Tamil- Kannada- and Telugu-speaking areas—about 35,000, 17,000, and 10,000 respectively.”
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Sircar’s estimate of 90,000 inscriptions from India presumably does not include inscriptions in the neighboring South Asian countries of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, which would add many thousands more to the total. Inscriptions in Indian languages, moreover, are also found in large numbers over a vast area of Asia and even beyond Asia, for instance, in Africa.¹¹ The comments made earlier about the prime importance of Indian inscriptions apply equally to these extra-Indian inscriptions, many of which constitute our principal, sometimes even our sole, source for the historical study of the Indianized civilizations of ancient Southeast and central Asia.
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¹¹ On Indian-language inscriptions from outside of South Asia, see section 4.3.7.
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The number of known inscriptions, moreover, is constantly growing as new records, including many of considerable importance, continue to be discovered within and outside of India every year.¹² A complete history of India written today, taking into account all recent epigraphic discoveries, would be significantly different from and more complete than one written, for example, only twenty years ago; there is no reason to think that this pattern should change in the foreseeable future. Moreover, as also noted by Sircar,¹³ a great many of the estimated 90,000 inscriptions already found in India have not yet been published. While it is true that many of the still unpublished records are either of minimal importance or too badly damaged to be deciphered, no doubt some of them will, when they are finally published, add significantly to our historical and cultural knowledge. Sircar thus decries the incorrect notion “that all important inscriptions have already been discovered and utilized in the reconstruction of the lost history of ancient India and that there is little else to do.”¹⁴ Epigraphy is indeed still a living and developing field, even if it has in recent years suffered something of a decline in standards in India¹⁵ and a general neglect elsewhere.¹⁶
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¹² Cf. EINES 91 and SIE 13.
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¹³ EINES 91.
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¹⁴ EINES 109; cf. also 91.
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¹⁵ See EINES 91–2.
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¹⁶ Cf. SIE 13 n. 1: “The study of Indian inscriptions . . . is no longer popular among European scholars.” But see also section 6.5.
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The decline of Indian epigraphic studies may be attributed, in part at least, to the special difficulties and problems involved in this field.¹⁷ Not only is the material vast, voluminous, and inherently difficult; it also requires a command of a range of languages, dialects, and script forms far greater than that needed for epigraphic studies in most other parts of the world. The inscriptions include materials in virtually all the major languages of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families and also involve several non-Indian languages of Southeast Asia and other regions. The variety of scripts is enormous, these being subject to the same pattern of extensive local and chronological variation as are Indian languages and dialects. Indian epigraphy is thus a subject of vast complexity which requires many years of study, but its inherent importance and the rewards to be gained from it more than justify the effort.
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¹⁷ EINES 92.
Linked texts (1)
- Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit