Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.t1: 3.4.1 Marathi
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.t1
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3.4.1 Marathi
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Śaṁ. Go. Tuḷpuḷe, *Prācīna Marāṭhī Korīva Lekha* ["Old Marathi Inscriptions"]; A. Master, "Some Marathi Inscriptions, a.d. 1060–1300," *BSOAS* 20, 1957, 417–35; A. V. Naik, "Inscriptions of the Deccan," 55–8, etc.; V. V. Mirashi, *Inscriptions of the Śilāhāras* (CII 6); D. B. Diskalkar, *JOI* 6, 132–7; *SIE* 53–5.
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The epigraphic material in Marathi is the most abundant and best-documented among the NIA languages. The principal reference sources are Master's brief anthology of sixteen inscriptions and Tuḷpuḷe's larger though by no means exhaustive compilation of seventy-six texts. Diskalkar (132) estimates a total of some three hundred inscriptions in Marathi, of which about two hundred are from Maharashtra proper and the rest from neighboring territories, mainly Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Marathi first began to appear in inscriptions around the eleventh century a.d.,⁶⁹ and Marathi inscriptions became especially common in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the language was widely used by the Yādavas of Devagiri and the Śilāhāras of northern Konkan (see CII 6) for their inscriptions. Marathi continued to be used epigraphically in the later medieval period, for instance in the records of the Ādil Shāhīs, and even into the European period; an interesting late (a.d. 1803) Marathi inscription is the long history of the Tanjore Marathas inscribed on the wall of the Bṛhadīśvara temple in Tañjāvur (V. Srinivansachari and S. Gopalan, *Bhoṁsle Vaṁśa Caritra*).
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⁶⁹ Occasional Marathi words and usages have also been noted in some inscriptions of the tenth century, e.g., the Marmuri copper plates (*Journal of the Bombay Historical Society* 2, 213–4).
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Most Marathi inscriptions are of the usual types of the period concerned, that is, donative or memorial records on stone, and copper plate charters; according to Diskalkar (132), the former type constitutes about three-quarters of the total. The majority are written in Devanāgarī, but some are in the Moḍī and Kannada scripts. As with other NIA language inscriptions, many of the Marathi inscriptions are bilingual. Very common are bilinguals of various types with Sanskrit, for example, Sanskrit copper plate charters with some of the "functional" portions written in Marathi and exhibiting varying degrees of linguistic admixture between Sanskrit and Marathi (see Master, 417–8). Many later Marathi inscriptions are bilingual with other languages such as Kannada, Telugu, or Persian. There are, of course, also monolingual Marathi inscriptions; the Dīve Āgar plate, for example (Tuḷpuḷe, 10–14; Master, 422–3; EI 28, 121–4), is an early copper plate grant composed entirely (except for the date in Sanskrit) in Old Marathi.