Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s5.t3: 2.5.3 Calligraphic writing

Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s5.t3

Language: English

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.

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