Indian Epigraphy c14.s5.1

c14.s5.1

Unlike Java, Cambodia does not possess a literature influenced by Indian literary tradition. But the Sanskrit inscriptions, dating from the 5th to the 14th century, found all over Cambodia, exhibit a very flourishing state of Sanskrit learning. The number of such inscriptions written in ornate kāvya style is the largest in Cambodia than in any other land of South-East Asia and many of them are quite voluminous. The use of the Śaka era and of the decimal system in numbers is first noticed in Cambodia respectively in the 6th and the 7th century. The first of them appears to have been introduced in this region by the merchants of the western areas of the Deccan, and the second probably by those of the southern areas of the Gujarātī-speaking region. In India, the decimal system is noticed for the first time in the date of the Sankheda (in the old Baroda State in Gujarat) copper-plate inscription of 594 A.D.³