Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.t5: 3.4.5 Bengali and other eastern NIA languages
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.t5
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3.4.5 Bengali and other eastern NIA languages
c8.s4.t5.1
As noted earlier (3.4), the eastern NIA languages, except for Oriya, on the whole have not been widely used for epigraphic purposes. In Bengali we have several dedicatory temple inscriptions,⁸¹ mostly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but dating back in one case to the fifteenth.⁸² Some of these are bilingual with or mixed with Sanskrit. There are also a few other stone inscriptions in Bengali (e.g., ARIE 1975–76, no. B.45/D.272, bilingual with Arabic), and some late copper plate records of the kings of Tripura in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (ARIE 1951–52, nos. A.13–19) are written in Bengali and Sanskrit.
c8.s4.t5.2
⁸¹ See A. K. Bhattacharyya, *A Corpus of Dedicatory Inscriptions from Temples of West Bengal*, nos. 56, 58, 62, 74, 96, 106, 115, 116, etc.
c8.s4.t5.3
⁸² Bhattacharyya, op. cit., no. S-1, A.D. 1490.
c8.s4.t5.4
Assamese inscriptions are similarly late and few in number, at least as far as they are reported in published sources. Some copper plates of the Ahom kings of the eighteenth century in Sanskrit and Assamese have been noted (ARIE 1957–58, nos. A.3–5), as well as a few stone inscriptions (ibid., nos. B.65, 74–5).
c8.s4.t5.5
A seventeenth-century inscription in Maithili has been published in R. K. Choudhary's *Select Inscriptions of Bihar*, 138 (cf. SIE 60).