Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c9.s1.t5: 4.1.6 Pilgrims' and travelers' records
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c9.s1.t5
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4.1.6 Pilgrims' and travelers' records
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Brief inscriptions recording the visits of pilgrims are often found at various sites,²⁵ especially on the walls or pathways of temples and other sacred sites of Buddhist, Brahmanical, and Jaina affiliation. Most commonly such inscriptions consist simply of the pilgrim's name in the nominative or bare stem form, or occasionally in the genitive. Large numbers of inscriptions of this type are often grouped together, for instance, at such sites as Bhuilī (ARIE 1961–62, nos. B.909–66) and Devaprayāg (ARIE 195) including gold leaves³⁰ from Burma³¹ and Indonesia.³² A similar gold leaf manuscript of the *Pañcaviṃśati-sāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā* has recently been discovered at Jetavanārāma (Anurādhapura), Sri Lanka.³³
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²⁵ See the following specimen in the Appendix: inscription on the Kosam pillar (no. 13).
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³⁰ Documents of this type are formally and functionally speaking equivalent to manuscripts, but since they are inscribed on a hard material they are conventionally treated as inscriptions in the scholarly literature.
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³¹ In Pāli; see section 4.3.7.5.
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³² See J. G. de Casparis, *Prasasti Indonesia* II.47–167; see also section 4.3.7.11.
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³³ *Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen*, 1983, 189–207. See also section 4.3.7.1 for another inscribed version of this text from Sri Lanka.
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Most common of all are the copies on bricks, metal images, terra-cotta plaques, and other materials of the so-called Buddhist creed, that is, the ubiquitous verse *ye dharmā hetuprabhavā* . . . or its equivalents in hybrid Sanskrit or Pāli, which are found in great numbers both in India³⁴ and in other Buddhist countries (see, e.g., 4.3.7.3, 4.3.7.5, and 4.3.7.6). Inscriptions on stone and other materials of *dhāraṇīs* are also common in India (e.g., Cuttack Museum, EI 26, 171–4) and elsewhere, for example, Sri Lanka (Abhayagiri, JIABS 5, 100–8) and China (see 4.3.7.12). Also in this class are the ubiquitous Tibetan “prayer-stones” inscribed with *oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ* and other Sanskrit *mantras* (see 4.3.7.12, n. 134).
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³⁴ E.g., Guṇṭupalli (I. K. Sarma, JESI 5, 59) and Ratnagiri (D. Mitra, *Ratnagiri*, II.284, 290. See also Daniel Boucher, “The *Pratītyasamutpādagāthā* and Its Role in the Medieval Cult of the Relics,” JIABS 14, 1991, 1–27.