Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c9.s1.t4: 4.1.4 Memorial inscriptions
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c9.s1.t4
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4.1.4 Memorial inscriptions
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Inscriptions in memory or honor of deceased persons, usually relatives of the sponsor of the inscription, are fairly common from an early period. Early examples, mostly in Prakrit, include records which refer to themselves by such terms as *laṭhi* or *yaṭhi* (Skt. *yaṣṭi*) ‘(memorial) pillar’,¹⁹ or *chāyākhambha*/*chāyāthambha* (*chāyāstambha*) ‘image pillars’,²⁰ found at Nāgārjunakoṇḍa and other Buddhist sites. Memorial pillars often commemorate persons killed in battle, as in some of the Nāgārjunakoṇḍa inscriptions (e.g., EI 35, 14–6) and in the Gaṅgaperuru inscription (EI 36, 207–8) memorializing one Gona who was killed in a cattle raid (*gogahana*). A well-known early (A.D. 510) Sanskrit inscription of the same class is the Eraṇ inscription of the time of Bhānugupta (SI I.345–6), recording the death in battle of Goparāja and his wife’s *satī*. A Jaina inscription of about the seventh century from Śravaṇa-Beḷgoḷa (EI 4, 22–8) commemorates the suicide by starvation of an *ācārya* Prabhācandra.
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¹⁹ For example, the Andhau inscriptions of the time of Caṣṭana and Rudradāman (SI I.173–5).
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²⁰ On the meaning of this term, see D. C. Sircar and K. G. Krishnan, EI 34, 1961–62, 20–1.
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Other Sanskrit memorial inscriptions commemorate a dead wife, as in the Sāngsi inscription (EI 28, 1
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FIGURE 6. Māṭ (Mathurā) portrait statue of King Kaniṣka: the inscription reads *mahārājā rājātirājā devaputro kaniṣka* ("The Great King, King over Kings, Son of the Gods, Kaniṣka"). From John M. Rosenfield, *The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans* (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), fig. 2; reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.