Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.t5.1

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.