Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c6.2

c6.2

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.