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Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s5: 2.5 Techniques of Epigraphic Writing

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s5

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Contents

2.5 Techniques of Epigraphic Writing

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BIP 87–92; PIP 88–119; IIEP 128–31; SIE 83–97.

2.5.1 General comments

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The technical features and visual qualities of Indic inscriptions vary widely, ranging from undecorated, strictly functional records to highly ornate and polished works of art. Especially in the earlier centuries, many inscriptions exhibit a rather casual attitude toward aesthetic quality and orthographic accuracy (see 3.3.8), which may be attributed in part to the marginal value traditionally accorded to the written as opposed to the spoken word in India (2.1.1). It is true that in some cases, for example, in Buddhist reliquary inscriptions that were meant to be permanently interred in *stūpas*, legibility and visual aesthetic appeal may be considered inherently insignificant. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to find extremes of carelessness in the planning and execution of inscriptions which were clearly meant to be seen and read; and while this is most common in minor private records, it can also be observed in royal inscriptions, as, for example, in the notorious case of the Erraguḍi rock edicts of Aśoka (see n. 82).²¹⁰ There are, of course, many exceptions to this pattern, especially in the late medieval period in which the arts of writing and engraving attained their highest development (see 2.5.3.1), but on the whole one must agree with Sircar (SIE 86) that “[t]he number of inscriptions carelessly written and engraved is ... by far larger than those written and engraved carefully.”

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²¹⁰ Note also J. Ph. Vogel’s comments (EI 20, 1929–30), regarding the Nāgārjunakoṇḍa inscriptions, that “the careless manner in which they have been recorded is astonishing” (11).

2.5.2 The technical execution of inscriptions

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2.5.2.1 Preparation of surfaces

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As with the general quality of the inscriptions, the degree of care in the preparation of the surfaces to be inscribed varies widely. In early records particularly, the inscriptions might be written directly on the intended surface with little or no preparation thereof; such is the case, for example, with many of the Aśokan rock inscriptions.²¹¹ As time went on, however, more sophisticated techniques were developed, culminating in the very skillfully dressed and prepared polished stone slabs, often of large dimensions, used for many inscriptions of the medieval period (cf. SIE 70). Similarly, inscribed copper plates were frequently prepared with considerable skill and artistry, especially in later centuries, though cruder examples are also by no means rare.

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²¹¹ The pillar edicts are written on exquisitely polished stone surfaces, but this preparation was evidently an aspect of the construction of the pillars themselves as monumental works of art, rather than as preparation for the inscriptions themselves.

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2.5.2.2 Execution of the inscription

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After the preparation of the intended surface, the letters of the inscription itself would usually be first written onto it in some temporary medium such as ink or chalk by a writer or scribe, known as *lipikāra*, *lekhaka*, *karaṇa*/*karaṇika*, *kāyastha*, and so on (see BIP 100–2 for further details). This preliminary step is discernible in occasional cases wherein the ink or paint is still visible in the inscription (e.g., at Bāndhogarh, EI 31, 168), or where the final step of carving the inscription was never carried out (e.g., the Giñjā hill inscription, ASIR 21, 1883–85, 119–20 [cf. EI 31, 168], and the Kasiā copper plate, ASIAR 1910–11, 73–7). The actual carving would then be carried out by an engraver (*sūtradhāra*, *śilākūṭa*, *rūpakāra*, etc.; cf. SIE 85). Sometimes, again mostly in the earlier period, the engravers seemed to be illiterate or minimally skilled, but in later times stone engraving became a legitimate art unto itself, and its expert practitioner came to be a person of some status (cf. IESIS 32–5) who would often (especially in later stone *praśastis*) be mentioned by name at the end of the inscription along with the composer and/or scribe.²¹² The verbs typically used to denote the activities of composing, writing, and engraving are, respectively, √(kr) or (*vi-*) √rac; (*ul-* or *vi-*) √likh;²¹³ and *ut*-√(kr) or (*ni-*) √khan.

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²¹² For examples, see Appendix, no. 8, vv. 22–23, and no. 12, v. 13. For cases where all three persons involved in the preparation of the record, viz. the composer, scribe, and engraver, are mentioned, see EI I, 42, ll. 27–8; 48–9, ll. 21–2; and 80–1, ll. 25–6 (cf. BIP 101 n. 12).

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The normal method of writing was by incising or carving lines into the hard surface with a stylus, chisel, or other suitable implement. Some early inscriptions, mostly Kharo\d{s}\d{t}h\={\i} relic dedications on metal plates, are written with a series of dots (e.g., the Taxila silver scroll, CII 2.1, 70--7). In the later medieval 142–8).²¹⁷ This system was largely abandoned in later centuries²¹⁸ (except in Southeast Asia, where it remained in use much longer),²¹⁹ and thereafter all inscriptions, verse and prose, are lineated and marks, sometimes developed into elaborate floral motifs, are used at the end of records, where they function as marks of both decoration and punctuation (see, e.g., EI 31, plate facing page 127, l. 212).

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Many inscriptions, especially in medieval and later times, are accompanied by engraved illustrations of various sorts. These may take the form of auspicious symbols such as Śiva’s bull Nandi, the Śiva-liṅga (e.g., CII 6, pl. XC), the conch shell (*śaṅkha*), lotus, and so on; or they may be representations of dynastic symbols, such as the Garuḍa on the copper plates of the Paramāras (CII 7.2, pl. I, IV, VI, etc.). Other illustrations refer specifically to the content of the record itself, such as the representation of the sun and moon (e.g., CII 6, pl. XC), alluding to the traditional blessing that a gift should last as long as the sun and moon; or of a donkey copulating with a woman or a pig, representing the mother of a violator of the gift according to the traditional “ass-curse” (e.g., IA 48, 1919, 47 and n. 33; EI 40, 1973–74, plate facing page 88), which is also sometimes explicitly spelled out in the text of the inscription.²²² *Satī* and other types of memorial stone inscriptions (see 4.1.4) are usually accompanied by representations, either visual or symbolic (typically in the form of a hand- or footprint), of the person memorialized.

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²²² E.g., CII 7.2, 207, *yo na dadāti tasya mātā* [*sic*] *gardabho jabhāti* [*sic*], and pl. LVIII. See also EI 9, 1907–8, 164, *jo anyathā karoti tasya pitā gardabhaḥ śūkarī mātā*.

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Corrections and omissions are indicated by various means. Sometimes, as in Aśokan rock edict XII at Kālsī, l. 31 (CII 1, 42), an incorrectly written passage was simply crossed out and the correct reading entered above the line. In copper plates, however, the standard practice was to beat the incorrect passage flat and rewrite it, or simply to write over it without erasure (see, e.g., Appendix, no. 10, l. 36). Omitted letters or words could be inserted by simply writing them into, above, or below the appropriate place in the line. Longer omissions would typically be added in the margins; their intended location was usually indicated by placing the beginning of the added passage in the upper or lower margin at the appropriate vertical position, and denoting the line where it belonged by a number indicating the number of lines from the top or bottom. Numerous examples of corrections of these types are pointed out in the editor’s notes to the Asankhali plates of Narasiṁha II, EI 31, 109–28. Alternatively, the placement of a marginal addition could be indicated in the text by the cross-shaped mark known as *kākapāda* or *haṁsapāda* (see, e.g., EI 3, 51 n. 9).

2.5.3 Calligraphic writing

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IESIS 32–8; R. Salomon, “Calligraphy in Pre-Islamic India,” in Asher and Gai, IEBHA, 3–6.

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Unlike in China or the Islamic world, in traditional India calligraphy did not achieve the level of a major art, which is not surprising in view of what has been said earlier (2.1.1, 2.5.1) about the relatively low status of the written word in India. Nonetheless, many specimens of calligraphic writing from various periods do survive in Indic inscriptions, and some of them demonstrate a very high degree of skill and artistry, although this aspect of Indian epigraphy and paleography has received little attention in scholarly writing.

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2.5.3.1 Calligraphic developments of the standard Brāhmī-derived scripts

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Even in relatively early times we sometimes find Brāhmī²²³ records which are engraved with considerable care and skill—for example, in the Nāsik cave inscriptions and in several of the Mathurā inscriptions (MI §18 and 118). But calligraphic writing proper, that is, writing with a systematically developed decorative component, first begins to appear around the second and third centuries A.D., for example, in the Bijayagaḍh Yaudheya inscription (CII 3, pl. xxxvi.B) in the north and in the inscriptions of the time of the Ikṣvāku kings at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa, Amarāvatī, Jaggayyapeṭa, and so on, in the south. These early calligraphic scripts are principally characterized by various forms and degrees of elongation and elaboration of the vowel diacritic signs, which is to remain the principal technique for calligraphic elaboration through the following centuries. The other major technique of decorative embellishment consists of various creative treatments of the principal consonantal characters themselves, as, for example, in the “box-headed” scripts of central India (see 2.2.5.3) in which all the letters are modeled into harmonious squared and angular forms. This type of embellishment by stylization was also employed in some later calligraphically developed scripts such as Siddhamātṛkā as well as in the “special calligraphic scripts” (see 2.5.3.2), often in conjunction with the technique of diacritic decoration.

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²²³ Kharoṣṭhī, for the most part, remained essentially a “clerk’s script” and did not attain any significant degree of calligraphic development, though some specimens (e.g., the Mamāne Dherī pedestal inscription, CII 2.1, 171–2) show a skillful hand.

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The development of these techniques reached its climax in northern India in the seventh and eighth centuries, from which period several inscriptions in Siddhamātṛkā constitute masterpieces of calligraphic art; see, for example, the Lakkhā Maṇḍal *praśasti* (Appendix, no. 8; fig. 18), displaying the characteristic features of artistically angularized consonants and highly elaborated vowel signs. This type of ornamental script attains extreme forms in some cases, particularly in signatures such as those of the Emperor Harṣa on the Bānskheṛā plate (EI 4, 208–11; fig. 1) or of one Pūrṇṇāditya at the Rājīvalocana temple at Rājīm (IEBHA, pl. 4). In the latter example the decorative portions of the vowel diacritics are elaborated into floral and animal-like motifs, a technique which is to be further developed in southern Indian calligraphy of succeeding centuries.

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The golden age of calligraphic writing in the south occurred in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The calligraphic inscriptions of this period are characterized by extreme elaboration of the vowel diacritics and subscript consonants of the first and last lines, forming elaborate floral and zoological motifs as a decorative border at the top and bottom of the inscription; see, for example, the Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa inscription of Malliṣeṇa (EI 3, plates between pages 194 and 195).

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2.5.3.2 The special calligraphic scripts

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Besides the previously mentioned calligraphic varieties of the standard scripts, there also developed in the Gupta period and succeeding centuries calligraphic forms of writing which, though ultimately derived from standard Brāhmī, became so stylized and elaborate as to virtually constitute separate scripts. The first of these scripts, variously referred to as “Ornamental Brāhmī” or (preferably) “Ornate Brāhmī,” is characterized by squat, squarish, highly stylized characters. Short inscriptions in this script have been found in considerable numbers at various sites in northern, central, and upper southern India (see IEBHA, 5). They presumably record personal names or pilgrims’ records (see 4.1.6), following the pattern, noted earlier, that the most elaborate calligraphic writings are primarily used for signatures. Because of the highly stylized forms of the letters of the Ornate Brāhmī inscriptions, they are extremely difficult to read, and few, if any, of them can be considered to have been satisfactorily deciphered.²²⁴

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²²⁴ See also R. Salomon, “Undeciphered Scripts of South Asia,” in Jayanta Chakrabarty and D. C. Bhattacharyya, eds., *S. K. Saraswati Commemoration Volume: Aspects of Indian Art and Culture* (Calcutta: Rddhi-India, 1983), 201–12 (esp. 203–5).

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FIGURE 1. Signature of King Harṣa on the Bānskheṛā copper plate: *svahasto mama mahārājādhijrāja-śrīharṣasya* (“This is the signature of me, the Great King of Kings, Śrī-Harṣa”). From EI 4, plate facing page 210; copyright, Archaeological Survey of India.

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The second of the “special” scripts is Śaṅkhalipi or “shell characters” (fig. 2). Like Ornate Brāhmī, this highly ornate script, also evidently used principally for signatures, was in wide use over virtually all of India except the far south from approximately the fourth to the eighth centuries A.D.; over six hundred examples of this script are now known.²²⁵ The characters are highly stylized, tending to conform to a general shape superficially resembling a conch shell or *śaṅkha*, whence the name applied to the script. Statistical and formal analysis of the characters indicates that they are derived from the characters of standard Brāhmī, but the changes are so extensive that it is still very difficult to authoritatively identify them.²²⁶ Several claims of decipherment have been put forward, but they are not convincing.²²⁷

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²²⁵ See R. Salomon, “New Śaṅkhalipi (Shell Character) Inscriptions,” *Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik* 11/12, 1986, 109–58, and references given there (esp. 109–10 n. 4).

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²²⁶ Salomon, op. cit., 145–52.

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²²⁷ See, for example, R. Salomon, “A Recent Claim to Decipherment of the ‘Shell Script,’” *JAOS* 107, 1987, 313–5.

2.5.4 Biscript inscriptions

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Biscript inscriptions, that is, those written in the same language repeated in different scripts, are found occasionally in various periods, though they are much less common than bilingual inscriptions (see 3.6). In the northwest, inscriptions were occasionally written in both Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī scripts, for instance, the Kanhiāra and Pāṭhyār inscriptions (CII 2.1, 178–9).²²⁸ Another Brāhmī/Kharoṣṭhī biscript has recently been discovered in Mathurā (EI 40, 168–9). Inscribed seals often have legends in both Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī (e.g., CII 2.1, 100, no. 2; 102, no. 11); one seal in the British Museum has the name of the owner in these two scripts and in Greek as well (JRAS 1905, 809–13).

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²²⁸ See also J. Ph. Vogel, “Two Brahmi and Kharoshthi Rock-Inscriptions in the Kangra Valley,” EI 7, 1902–3, 116–9.

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FIGURE 2. Shell character (*Śaṅkhalipi*) inscription from Siddha kī guphā, Deogaṛh (Lalitpur Dist., UP). Photograph courtesy of Michael D. Willis.

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Biscripts are also sometimes found among later inscriptions; these typically involve a combination of a local form or derivative of Brāhmī and a more widely used script such as Devanāgarī. A well-known example is the Paṭṭadakal pillar inscription of the time of the Cālukya king Kīrttivarman II (A.D. 754; EI 3, 1–7; see 2.2.5.4), with the full text given in both northern Indian Siddhamātṛkā and in the current local southern (proto-Telugu-Kannada) script. In other cases, such as the Kāṅgrā Jvālāmukhī *praśasti* (EI 1, 190–5), part of the inscription is written in the local script (Śāradā) and the rest in Devanāgarī.

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