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Indian Epigraphy c10.s1: 1. Writing and Engraving

Indian Epigraphy c10.s1

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1. Writing and Engraving

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The practices of writing the letters of a record with ink on a softer material and of scratching or engraving them on a hard substance were both popular in ancient India. The royal charters were generally written at first on a perishable material and then engraved usually on copper plates and occassionally on stones.

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In ancient and medieval India, specialised learning in various branches of the sciences and arts and in the sacred lore was more or less the monopoly of the Brāhmaṇa community. But secular learning of the three R's was available to the upper classes among the non-Brahmanical communities, members of which sometimes acquired proficiency in Sanskrit and produced poetical works of considerable merit.¹ Literate people of these classes often took the writer's profession and, as a result, the communities of professional writers gradually came into being even in the early period.

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¹ See the poems composed by the Māthura-Kāyastha brothers Jayasiṁha and Śivanābhaka in *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXII, pp. 336 ff.; Vol. XXXIII, pp. 31 ff., pp. 65 ff.

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The common expression for the writer of a document or the copyist of a manuscript was *lekhaka* which also indicated a professional clerk.² Often people of the Brāhmaṇa community also adopted this profession. Among copyists of manuscripts there are many Brāhmaṇas. Buddhist and Jain monks are known to have copied works of their religious literature.

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² Cf. the word *lipikara* in the inscriptions of Aśoka (*Select Inscriptions*, p. 40, text line 6; p. 53, note 9) and the designation *rāja-lipikara* sometimes occurring in early inscriptions (*Ep. Ind.*, Vol. II, p. 102).

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In copper-plate grants, the writer is generally called Kāyastha¹ and Karaṇika² or Karaṇin³ (i.e. an officer belonging to the Karaṇa⁴ meaning ‘the office of administration’). The epigraphic records sometimes mention the Karaṇika-Brāhmaṇa⁵ and Karaṇa-Kāyastha.⁶ While early legal authorities⁷ mention Karaṇa as a tribe, medieval lexicons⁸ recognise Kāyastha and Karaṇa as synonymous terms meaning a ‘scribe’ or ‘a member of the writer class.’ These facts may suggest that the tribal people called Karaṇa adopted, in some parts of India, the profession of scribes while the Kāyasthas were originally a professional class of accountant-scribes, the whole group of writers being later crystallised into a sort of caste called Kāyastha or Karaṇa. The Persian word dabir, ‘writer’, is found in Indian epigraphs as dibira or divira.⁹ It was probably introduced into the western areas of India, which once came under the influence of the Śakas and the Sassanians of Iran.

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¹ The Kāyasthas first occur in the inscriptions of the Gupta age (cf. Select Inscriptions, p. 284; etc.). Vijñāneśvara explains the word occurring in the Yājñavalkyasmṛti (I, 336) as gaṇako lekhakaś=ca, i.e. an accountant-scribe, for which see also the Mahābhārata, II, 5, 72. The word kāya-stha literally means ‘one who stays in the body [of another]’. An officer who sat beside his master in discharging his duties and was generally the chief intermediary between his master and the latter’s clients may have been called Kāyastha because he was staying in the person of his master as it were. See Bhār. Vid., Vol. X, 1949, pp. 280 ff.

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² Ep. Ind., Vol. I, pp. 81, 129, 163, etc. Kielhorn explains Karaṇika as ‘a writer of a karaṇa (a legal document)’. The Karaṇika is the same as Karaṇattān (Sanskrit Karaṇastha?) of Tamil inscriptions (Ep. Ind., Vol. XXV, p. 132), mentioned along with Kaṇakku (Sanskrit Gaṇaka), i.e. the present day Karaṇam (accountant-scribe) of South India.

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³ Ind. Ant., Vol. XII, p. 122; Harṣacarita, Nirnayasagar Press ed., p. 227.

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⁴ Ep. Ind., Vol. XXIV, p. 128.

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⁵ Bhandarkar’s List, No. 350.

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⁶ See Ind. Ant., Vol. XVII, p. 13; Bendall, Cat. Sans. Budh. Mss., p. 70, No. 1364.

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⁷ Manusmṛti, X, 20; Yājñavalkyasmṛti, I, 92.

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⁸ Cf. Vaijayantī, p. 78, l. 147 (Karaṇa, writer of the king); p. 137, l. 4 (Karaṇa, writer); p. 137, l. 45 (Kāyastha, writer). The Karaṇa community of Orissa is similar to the Kāyasthas of Bengal and elsewhere in North India. For the mention of the Karaṇas in the early medieval inscriptions of Orissa, see Ep. Ind., Vol. XXIV, p. 175, text line 15.

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⁹ CII, Vol. III, p. 122 (Khoh plate of 496 A. D.); Ind. Ant., Vol. VI, p. 10; etc.

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As regards private records on stone, their text was usually prepared by a professional writer and a copy of it was given to the engraver who was generally a mason called a *sūtra-dhāra*, *śilākūṭa*, *rūpakāra*, *śilpin*, etc. The mason at first dressed the stone and drew the letters on it with ink, etc., under the supervision and guidance of the writer and then engraved the letters. Sometimes the professional writer himself copied the text of the document on the stone for the guidance of the engraver. We have some records, the letters of which are painted on stone, the intention of engraving them at a later date remaining unmaterialised.¹ The amount of carelessness noticed in a large number of private epigraphs on stone however indicates that often incompetent masons engraved the records without getting the letters drawn previously on the stone.

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¹ See *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXI, p. 168; above, p. 81.

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For royal records, a learned man of the court was engaged to prepare a fair copy of the text on a sheet of birch bark, etc., or to write it on the stone slabs or copper plates with ink or a pointed instrument. The copy of the document was written on a sheet of the size of the stone on which it had to be engraved. The text of a copper-plate grant was generally prepared by a high officer of the king, although the eulogistic poems appearing in medieval grants were composed by the court poets.

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The practice of writing the text of a document on the plates first in ink is clearly indicated by a copper plate discovered at Kasia (Gorakhpur District, Uttar Pradesh), which bears 13 lines of writing of which only the first is incised while the remaining 12 are written in black ink.² This was meant to facilitate the work of engraving and also to ensure the correctness of the inscription. In many of the cases, the writing was done by a professional scribe of the court and the engraver incised the letters according to the drawing, although sometimes, especially in the case of minor ruling families, the engravers themselves wrote the text on the plates or engraved the text on the plates without previously drawing the letters on them.

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² *An Rep. Arch. Surv. Ind.*, 1910-11, p. 74. This inscription must have been first written out in ink on the plate and then the plate was given to the engraver to cut the written letters into the metal.

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The Deopada stone inscription¹ of king Vijayasena of Bengal is known to have been engraved by a renowned artist named Śūlapāṇi who was the head of a guild of the artisans of Varendra (North Bengal) and enjoyed the feudatory title of Rāṇaka. The neat and beautiful incision of the inscription excites the readers' admiration. The Talagunda inscription,² which is a praśasti composed by Kubja, the court poet of the Kadamba king Śāntivarman of the Kannaḍa country, was written on the stone slab by the poet himself so that the engraver succeeded in performing his work neatly without committing mistakes. The number of inscriptions carelessly written and engraved is, however, by far larger than those written and engraved carefully.

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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. I, pp 307 ff.

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² Ibid., Vol. VIII, pp. 31 ff. and Plate. See verse 34 of the record.

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On some early copper plates the letters are formed by means of dots instead of continuous strokes.³ The engraving on some copper-plate grants from South India is so shallow that the letters appear to have been scratched on them by a sharp-pointed needle, as on the palmyra leaves, probably after putting a layer of mud on the plates.⁴

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³ See the Taxila and Kalwan plates (ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 55 f. and Plate; Vol. XXI, p. 259 and Plate); above, p. 76.

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⁴ Cf. ibid., Vol. XXVII, Plates between pp. 128 and 129, 130 and 131; above, p. 76.

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According to Kalhaṇa's Rājatarangiṇī,⁵ the officer-in-charge of the preparation of documents at the Kashmirian court was called Paṭṭopādhyāya (i.e. a professional teacher in charge of the preparation of title-deeds), who belonged to the Akṣapaṭala department which Stein understands as the Accountant General's office and Bühler as the Record office or the Daftar or Court of Rolls.⁶ In inscriptions, a similar royal officer is sometimes mentioned as *Dharmalekhin*, *Śāsanika*, *Śāsanādhikārika*, *Śāsanādhikārin*, etc.¹

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⁵ V, verses 397 f.

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⁶ Cf. Bühler, Indian Palæography, p. 102; below, p. 99.

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XVI, p. 208; Vol. XX, p. 315; *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XI, pp. 115, 314; Vol. XXVIII, p. 189; etc.

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Often illiterate or semi-literate stone-cutters or goldsmiths were entrusted with the task of engraving records on stone or copper plates, and this fact accounts for the numerous errors noticed in a large number of epigraphs, especially those engraved on behalf of private individuals.² We have also many instances of badly engraved records even among royal charters, particularly those issued by minor ruling chiefs.³ The Banaras plate⁴ of Kalacuri Karṇa (c. 1040-71) offers an instance of an imperial charter written and engraved by irresponsible and incompetent persons. But the grant was made when the king was stationed at Prayāga (Allahabad) in the course of a tour of pilgrimage and it is possible that the work of engraving the charter was entrusted to a local artisan who could not read the writing of the draft properly. Usually, however, powerful kings had in their service trained and competent engravers who performed their work creditably. The minor errors noticed in the records of imperial ruling families are due generally to the scribes and not to the engravers.

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² See, e.g., *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXVIII, pp. 44 ff., p. 145; *JBRS*, Vol. XXXVII, Parts 3-4, pp. 7 ff.; Vol. XLI, Part 2, pp. 1 ff.; etc. According to the *Mitākṣarā* on the *Yājñavalkyasmṛti* (II, 89), a royal deed had to be written in correct and elegant language, although documents of ordinary people were not required to be written in correct Sanskrit and could be written in local dialects.

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³ See, e. g., *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXVIII, pp 112 ff.; pp. 276 ff.; pp. 290 ff.; pp. 324 ff.; etc.

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⁴ *Ibid.*, Vol. II, pp. 305 ff.

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The name of the person who engraved the copper-plate grants is often mentioned in medieval records. The word for ‘engraved’ is generally *utkīrṇa* and rarely *utkīlita*, etc. These engravers were artisans styled the *pitalahāra*, *lohakāra* or *ayaskāra*, i.e. a brazier, blacksmith or coppersmith,⁵ the *sūtradhāra*, i.e. a mason,⁶ the *hemakāra* or *sūnāra*, i.e. a goldsmith,⁷ the *śilpin*, *vijñānin* or *vijñānika*, i.e. an artisan,¹ etc. In the inscriptions of the Ganjam-Srikakulam region, the engraver is often mentioned as the *akṣaśālin*, *ākṣaśālika*, *arkaśālin*, *akhasāle*, etc. This refers to the goldsmith caste now called Akasāle in the Telugu- and Kannaḍa-speaking areas.

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⁵ See ibid., Vol. IV, p. 170; *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XVII. pp. 227, 230, 236; etc.

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⁶ *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XV, p. 360.

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⁷ *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. III, p. 314; *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XVIII, p. 17.

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¹ Cf. *Ind. Ant.*, Vol. XVII, p. 234; Vol. XVI, p. 208.

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There were manuals for the guidance of the clerks for the preparation of documents. Kṣemendra Vyāsadāsa’s *Lokaprakāśa* shows how different kinds of bonds, bills of exchange (*huṇḍi*), etc., were to be drafted while the *Lekhapañcāsikā* indicates how private letters as well as land-grants, treaties, etc., should be drawn.² One such work entitled *Lekhapaddhati* containing numerous specimens of letters and documents of various kinds has been published in the Gaekwad Oriental Series. The *praśast-āvali* works of Mithilā deal with the epistolary art and contain forms of communications to be addressed to feudatory and imperial rulers, both indigenous and foreign, as well as to one’s feudatories, learned men, private citizens, etc. They also contain specimens of private communications. A notable work of this class is the *Patrakaumudī* ascribed to Vararuci.³

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² See Bühler, *Indian Palaeography*, p. 102.

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³ K.P. Jayaswal, *A Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in Mithila*, Vol. II, pp. 12-13, Nos. 71 ff., 85ff. Another work of the same kind is Dalapati’s *Yāvanaparipāṭyanukrama* (*Itihāsa*, Bengali, Vol. IX, pp. 71-72). Cf. below, p. 106.

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In the schools, pupils generally copied their text books from their teachers’ copies. Rich men used to engage professional scribes for copying manuscripts for them. These manuscripts were generally written with great care.

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