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Indian Epigraphy c14.s1: 1. Central Asia

Indian Epigraphy c14.s1

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1. Central Asia

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Aśoka’s inscriptions discovered in the Peshawar and Hazara Districts of West Pakistan are written in the Prakrit language and Kharoṣṭhī alphabet, the latter being an Indian modification of the Aramaic script introduced in the region during the Achaemenian occupation. But an important inscription of the Maurya king discovered in Afghanistan is the Kandahar bilingual epigraph which is in two versions, one in Greek and the other in Aramaic.² Among later records from the Afghanistan area written in Prakrit and Kharoṣṭhī, mention may be made of the inscriptions of the times of Menander and Vijayamitra found in the Bajaur tribal territory and the vase inscription of Huviṣka’s time from Khawat (Wardak) about 30 miles to the west of Kabul.¹

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² Journal Asiatique, 1958, pp. 1 ff.; Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXIV, pp. 1 ff. A few other Aramaic inscriptions have also been ascribed to Aśoka.

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¹ Select Inscriptions, pp. 102 ff., 153-54.

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But, before the 6th century A.D., the use of Kharoṣṭhī died not only out of the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent but also out of Afghanistan. The latest Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions in India are two small Taxila records of about the 5th century A.D., though we have a Brāhmī inscription of about the 3rd century A. D. from the same area.² The Gardez (Afghanistan) Vināyaka image inscription in Sanskrit, now in the Dargah Pir Ratan Nath at Kabul, may be mentioned in this connection. It is written in the Late Brāhmī alphabet of the 6th century A.D. and is stated to have been installed by the Śāhī king Khiṅgāla in the 8th year of his reign.³ A late medieval inscription in Nāgarī characters is noticed on the left side of the Central Mihrab of the rock-cut chamber near Chahil Zina (literally ‘forty steps’) in the vicinity of old Kandahar.⁴

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² Cf. Marshall, Taxila, Vol. I, pp. 274 ff.; Ep. Ind., Vol. XXX, pp. 59 ff.

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³ Cf. Ramachandran and Sharma, Archaeological Reconnaissance in Afghanistan (Preliminary Report of the Indian Archaeological Delegation 1956), 1956, pp. 1-2. See East and West, December 1958, pp. 327-28; Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXV, pp. 44 ff.

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⁴ Ramachandran and Sharma, op. cit., p. 19. For similar records from Baku (Azerbaijan), see A. R. Ep., 1956-57, Nos. B 547 ff. We have seen the photograph of an inscription of the same type from Samarkand (Ujbekistan).

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A large number of manuscripts and documents written in Kharoṣṭhī with ink on wedge-shaped and rectangular tablets of wood have been found in Chinese Turkestan. They are usually assigned to dates ranging from the 3rd century A.D. There are also manuscripts like that of the Prakrit Dhammapada which is written in Kharoṣṭhī on birch-bark sheets and is assigned to the 2nd century A.D. Kharoṣṭhī continued to be used in the said area till the 7th century A.D. side by side with Brāhmī which seems to have been introduced in Central Asia during the Gupta age. Among Sanskrit manuscripts in Brāhmī on palm-leaf, paper and birch-bark, reference may be made to Kumāralāta’s *Kalpanāmaṇḍitikā* and the *Udānavarga*, both of which are assignable on palaeographical grounds to the 4th or 5th century A.D., and the Bower manuscripts, the date of which is about a century later. Other Sanskrit manuscripts in Brāhmī, discovered in Central Asia, include fragments of Aśvaghoṣa’s drama entitled *Śāriputraprakaraṇa*. From about the 7th century A.D., we have records in the local dialects of Central Asia written in the derivatives of Brāhmī.¹

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¹ See my *Indian Palaeography*, Chapter II, Section 6, and Chapter III, Section 5.

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The earliest epigraphs in Nepal are the Rummindei and Nigali Sagar pillar inscriptions of the Maurya emperor Aśoka (3rd century B.C.) written in the Early Brāhmī alphabet and Prakrit language.² Early Licchavi epigraphs like the Changunarayan pillar inscription (464 A.D.) of Mānadeva are written in Sanskrit and the Late Brāhmī of East India, while the characters of the Sanskrit records of the later members of the Licchavi family are Siddhamātṛkā.³ Though most of the early medieval records of Nepal belonging to later dates, both epigraphic and literary, are written in Gauḍīya or the East Indian derivative of Siddhamātṛkā, some Buddhist manuscripts are written in Bhaikṣukī, while Buddhist Dhāraṇīs, etc., in Sanskrit were often written in a derivative of the Siddhamātṛkā alphabet called Rañjā or Rañjanā which was also used for that purpose in Tibet.⁴ The Tibetan alphabet itself is a slightly modified form of Siddhamātṛkā. Buddhist Dhāraṇīs were written in China and Japan in the Siddhamātṛkā alphabet till quite recent times.

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² *Select Inscriptions*, pp. 70-71.

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³ See Sylvain Lévi, *Le Nepal*, Part III, pp. 10 ff. and Plates. Cf. R. Gnoli, *Nepalese Inscriptions in Gupta Characters*, 1956.

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⁴ See my *Indian Palaeography*, Chapter V, Section 3.

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Early medieval manuscripts of a large number of works copied in East India have been found in Nepal and Tibet. Of these, the Tibetan collection contains mostly Buddhist works, while both Buddhist and Brahmanical works are found in the Nepalese collection in large numbers. The discovery of many manuscripts in Nepal, which were copied in the dominions and during the reigns of the Pāla kings of Bengal and Bihar, is explained by the fact that, during the early days of the Muslim occupation of Eastern India, many scholars, afraid of Turkish persecution, fled to the north, especially to the Nepal region, together with the books in their family libraries. There is also evidence to show that professional copyists of one area were often employed for copying manuscripts in the neighbouring regions.¹

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¹ Cf. IHQ, Vol. XXX, pp. 382-87.

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