Indian Epigraphy c17: Appendix I. Spurious Epigraphs
Indian Epigraphy c17
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Appendix I. Spurious Epigraphs
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Forgery of documents for the purpose of establishing one's title to a plot of land or some such object is well known throughout the ages. Students of Indian epigraphy are familiar with such records pertaining to the ancient and medieval periods, the earliest amongst them being the Nalanda and Gaya copper-plate grants¹ of Samudragupta (c. 335-76 A. D.). Similar records have been met with in all parts of India, though the southern part of the Kannada-speaking area has been especially productive of them and has offered us some of the most bare-faced specimens purporting to have been issued by such legendary kings as Janamejaya of the Mahābhārata, whom tradition places about 5000 years ago.²
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¹ Select Inscriptions, pp. 262-66.
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² Cf. Bomb. Gaz., Vol. 1, Part ii, p. 301, note. For a fictitious grant of Rāma of Ayodhyā quoted in the Skanda Purāṇa, see Bhār. Vid., Vol. VI, 1945, pp. 237 ff. See also Fleet's article in Ind. Ant., Vol. XXX, pp. 201 ff.
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A rock inscription of 1169 A. D.³ near Sasaram in Bihar records the interesting fact that the Brāhmaṇas of Svarṇahala secured a forged grant in respect of two villages by bribing an officer of the Gāhaḍavāla king Vijayacandra (c. 1155-70 A. D.) of Kanauj and that the local king Pratāpadhavala exhorted the future rulers of his family to be careful about the spurious document. The said copper-plate grant, issued in the name of Gāhaḍavāla Vijayacandra, was recently found in the possession of a Brāhmaṇa family of Sunahar (ancient Svarṇahala) near Sasaram.⁴
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³ Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXIII, pp. 23ff.
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⁴ Ibid., Vol. XXXV, pp. 153ff.
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Although sometimes stone pillars were also used for engraving grants of land, etc., it was difficult to forge such documents in secret. Moreover, records of this type were expected to be set up near the gift land or in the compound of temples when the land, etc., were granted in favour of gods.¹ Forgery of stone inscriptions was therefore unusual. A few specimens of spurious lithic records are however known, though these were forged for a different purpose.
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¹ Sometimes votive inscriptions were engraved on walls or pillars in the temples or on stone tablets embedded in the walls or on plaques deposited in the temples.
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Sometime ago, a stone bowl bearing a small Kharoṣṭhī inscription was secured by the Bhārat Kalā Bhavan, attached to the Hindu University, Varanasi.² The writing is a palpable forgery since the persons responsible for it had apparently very insufficient knowledge about the forms of Kharoṣṭhī letters and the language expected in a Kharoṣṭhī document. With the partition of India in 1947, the zone where Kharoṣṭhī writing was prevalent now forms a part of West Pakistan. Kharoṣṭhī epigraphs have therefore a special demand in the Indian museums, and it is not very difficult here to pass spurious articles as genuine. Thus commercial motive lies at the root of the forgery of the said document.
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² A. R. Ep., 1955-56, No. B 366.
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Similar was the motive behind the forgery of the Rummindei pillar inscription³ of Aśoka. About the beginning of the year 1928, Birendranath Ray of Purī, a well-known collector of antiquities and founder of the now-defunct Ray’s Museum, was reported to have discovered a stone tablet (19" × 12" × 7") bearing writing in Aśokan Brāhmī. It was said that Ray secured the inscription from a cultivator of Kapileśvara, about a mile to the south of the Liṅgarāja temple at Bhubaneswar, and that the stone had been fixed into the mud wall of the latter’s house for generations. Haranchandra Chakladar of the University of Calcutta deciphered the writing and delivered a lecture on its identity with the Rummindei pillar inscription at a meeting of the Orissa Historical Association, Purī, on the 2nd Jyāiṣṭha, 1335 B. S., and its report appeared in the *Forward* of Calcutta. Since many of the edicts of Aśoka have been found in several versions scattered in different parts of his empire,
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³ *Select Inscriptions*, pp. 79-71; above, p. 389.
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APPENDIX—SPURIOUS EPIGRAPHS
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Chakladar regarded the Kapileśvara inscription as a genuine copy of the Rummindei epigraph. Unfortunately, he did not notice that the nature of the Rummindei inscription precludes the possibility of its having other versions. It records that Aśoka visited Lumbinī-grāma, sanctified by the birth of the Buddha, on a pilgrimage and that he not only raised a pillar and platform on the holy site but exempted the village from the payment of bali (land tax payable in cash) and made it aṣṭa-bhāgika, i.e. entitled to pay the royal share of the produce at the rate of 1/8 instead of the normal rate which was much higher. It will be seen that such a record had no place outside Lumbinī-grāma (Rummindei) and that therefore no genuine copy of it required to have been displayed by the emperor in distant Orissa. We have little doubt that the Kapileśvara copy of the Rummindei inscription is a recent forgery.
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Chakladar’s erroneous views regarding the Kapileśvara epigraph being a genuine copy of the Rummindei inscription inspired uncritical writers to claim Orissa as the birth place of the Buddha. Some Oriyas believe that the Buddha was born at the headquarters of the former State of Baudh in Orissa while others speak of Baudapura in the Cuttack District. In a note in the Pravāsī (Bengali), Śrāvaṇa, B. S. 1335, pp. 626-27 Chakladar criticised such theories, but still regarded the Kapileśvara inscription as genuine and expressed his intention to publish the epigraph in English. But he does not appear to have done so probably because his friends in the field of Aśokan studies succeeded later in convincing him about the spurious nature of the record.
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It is extremely difficult for a non-palaeographist to copy satisfactorily an old inscription in Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī because there are very few inscriptions in which all the letters are clearly visible to the unskilled eye. Moreover, books containing facsimiles of inscriptions are not easily available to the ordinary reader. It is therefore interesting to note that the Rummindei edict happens to be the only small inscription of Aśoka, in which almost all the letters are distinct and of which a clear representation appeared early in this century in text books meant for colleges and schools. V. A. Smith published a retouched facsimile of the record in his *Oxford History of India* and *Oxford School History of India*, prescribed respectively for the B.A. and Entrance (Matriculation) Examinations of the Indian Universities. The same facsimile became widely known in Eastern India with its reproduction in Haraprasad Sastri’s History of India (in Bengali) meant for school children and later in some other text books of the kind. There can hardly be any doubt that the people responsible for the Kapileśvara inscription copied it from the said facsimile not much earlier than 1928.
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The following news item emanating from New Delhi on the 19th June 1963 appeared in the newspapers : “Asokan Edict on Stone Bowl—A unique instance of an Asokan edict inscribed on a surface other than that of a pillar or a rock-face—the only two known so far—has been recently brought to light, reports UNI. It is a short Kharoshthi inscription engraved around a stone bowl (diameter 20 cm) of Gandhara origin, recently acquired by the Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay. Studies have revealed that it is an exact copy of the major part of the seventh rock edict of Asoka, found at Shahbazgarhi of Peshawar District. The initial portion of the edict consisting of 18 syllables is missing and is probably engraved on the lid of the bowl, which is not available.”² Unfortunately it has not been realised that the inscription is a recent forgery.
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² See *The Statesman* (Calcutta), dated 20.6.63, p. 8, column 4.
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For a student of Asokan records, it is difficult to believe that the Maurya emperor engraved his edicts on stone bowls. In the first place, Asoka speaks of the incision of his records only on *parvata* (Rupnath and Sahasram), *śilā-stambha* (Rupnath, Sahasram and Delhi-Topra VII) and *śilā-phalaka* (Delhi-Topra VII) and never on stone bowls or any such thing. Secondly, Asoka often refers to the purpose for which his edicts were engraved, viz. that they would be everlasting and that his officers, subjects and successors should hear them read so as to enable them to follow his instructions in regard to *Dharma*.³
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¹ The statement is rather misleading.
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³ Cf. *Select Inscriptions*, pp. 24, 26, 38, 47, 57.
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APPENDIX—SPURIOUS EPIGRAPHS
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This purpose could scarcely have been served by a bowl which would easily break into pieces. Moreover the seventh Rock Edict belongs to a series of records which Aśoka engraved at various places together.
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Another point to be remembered is that, if Brāhmī is difficult for a non-palaeographist to copy, Kharoṣṭhī writing is far more difficult, and the facsimile of the Shahbazgarhi version of Rock Edict VII is not likely to help even an ordinary student of palaeography. One may therefore wonder how the Prince of Wales Museum inscription could be forged, apparently by non-palaeographists, without help. But such help was provided by us in our small work entitled *Inscriptions of Aśoka*, published in 1957 by the Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. In this book, meant for ordinary readers, an eye-copy of the Shahbazgarhi version of Rock Edict VII, prepared by us, was inserted for the purpose of illustrating Kharoṣṭhī writing just as the Rummindei edict was reproduced for illustrating Early Brāhmī. It will be seen that lines 2-5 have been copied in the Prince of Wales inscription, the first line consisting of 18 syllables being omitted. It is significant that the inscription was secured by the Prince of Wales Museum after the publication of the above work in 1957. There is hardly any doubt that the Prince of Wales Museum inscription was forged in the period between 1957 and 1963.
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We have seen a few early or medieval images coming from the Orissa region and bearing inscriptions which are apparently incised recently though the engravers attempted to pass them as genuine old epigraphs. The motive is commercial since inscribed images are usually regarded as more valuable than uninscribed ones.