Indian Epigraphy c6.s1: 1. Indian Inscriptions
Indian Epigraphy c6.s1
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1. Indian Inscriptions
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Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions, and ‘inscription’ literally means any writing engraved on some object. In India, rocks as well as lithic, metallic, earthen or wooden pillars, tablets, plates and pots, as also bricks, shells, ivory plaques and other objects were generally used for incising inscriptions. Often writing in relief such as we find in the legends on coins¹ and seals,² which are usually produced out of moulds or dies, and also records painted on cave walls or written in ink on wooden tablets are regarded as inscriptions, although these writings are not actually engraved. As is usually the case with inscriptions in the Perso-Arabic script, the letters of certain late medieval records in the indigenous Indian alphabets are generally not engraved but are formed by scooping out the space around them.
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¹ Thousands of early Indian coins have been discovered at various places in different parts of India. The earliest of these bear no legend. The fashion of mentioning the name of the issuing authority in the coin-legend was popularised in India by the foreign rulers beginning with the Indo-Greeks who conquered wide areas of North-Western India about the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. Most of the indigenous Indian coins bearing legends have to be assigned to later dates. See *The Age of Imperial Unity*, ed. Majumdar, p. 159.
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² Hundreds of seals have been discovered in various ancient sites in different parts of North India. They are mostly of clay and steatite, though some of them are of ivory and other objects including metal. Royal seals affixed to copper-plate grants for the purpose of authentication were made of bronze or copper. Some of the seals bear only emblems and others only legends, while the majority bear both emblems and legends. See Chapter V, § 6, below.
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Inscriptions may greatly vary in point of length. Sometimes an epigraph contains only a mark or one single word or expression, indicating the name of an individual, often a pilgrim at a holy religious establishment engraving his name on a wall or stone to commemorate his visit, or standing as the label of a sculptured scene from the epics or the Jātakas.¹ Somewhat longer inscriptions may record the dedication of the images of deities² or commemorate such events as the fall of a hero in battle or such curious social customs as the self-immolation of a widow⁴ and the head-offering of a devotee.⁵ In some cases, however, an inscription may embody a kāvya in many cantos or a drama in several acts. The Udaipur Rājasamudra inscription,⁶ called the Rājapraśasti-kāvya, falls in the first category, while the Ajmer Lalitavigraharāja and Harakeināṭaka inscriptions⁷ are instances of the second type. The Kudumiyamalai (Pudukottai, Madras State) inscription⁸ contains a unique seventh century work on musical notations.
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¹ Some of the Barhut inscriptions belong to this class. The marks and names of masons fall in the category of very small inscriptions.
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² See, e.g., Ancient India, No. 9, Plate CX, Nos. 1-2.
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⁴ Ibid., Plate CXII, No. 1.
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⁵ Ibid., Plate CXI, No. 1.
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⁶ Ep. Ind., Vols. XXIX-XXX, Appendix, pp. 1 ff.
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⁷ Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, pp. 201 ff.
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⁸ Ep. Ind., Vol. XII, pp. 226 ff.
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Epigraphic records may be broadly classified under two groups: (1) those engraved by or on behalf of the ruling authority, and (2) those incised on behalf of private individuals or organizations. The largest number of epigraphs of the second category record donations made in favour of religious establishments or installation of images for worship. They are usually incised on the object that were donated or installed, and are, as a rule, small. In some cases, however, they mention the king during whose reign the grant was made or the installation took place. Innumerable dedicatory inscriptions, big and small, are engraved on the walls, etc., of reputed religious establishments and centres of pilgrimage, such as the temples at Bhubaneswar, Draksharama, Srikurmam, Simhachalam, Srirangam, Kanchipuram, Lalgudi and other places.⁹ The majority of the donations recorded in these epigraphs were made by pilgrims, some of whom were kings, chiefs or royal officers. In certain cases, people are known to have made donations in favour of such temples in *absentia*.¹ Pilgrims visiting the temples in the course of pilgrimage often carried with them a written eulogy with a view to getting it engraved on a temple wall after having made the desired donations.²
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³ Loc. cit., No. 3, Plate CXI, No. 1.
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⁹ SII, Vol. IV, Nos. 99 ff. and 1006 ff.; Vol. V, Nos. 1150 ff.; Vol. VI, Nos. 678 ff. and 692 ff.; Ancient India, No. 9, Plate CVIII; etc.
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¹ Cf. *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXI, pp. 100-01.
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² Cf. *ibid.*, Vol. XXXIII, p. 43, note 2.
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Eulogistic compositions, called *praśasti*, were sometimes composed and engraved on stone tablets or pillars to commemorate public works like the excavation of a tank or step-well or the construction of a temple by a royal or ordinary personage or a group of individuals. The ruler of the country is usually mentioned in such works composed on behalf of private persons or officials. Even private records, therefore, often offer valuable information for the reconstruction of political and cultural history as well as for other allied subjects such as topography. The Uttiramerur (Chingleput District, Madras) inscriptions³ throw very welcome light on the village administration in Southern India during the tenth century.
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³ *An. Rep. Arch. Surv. Ind.*, 1904-05, pp. 131 ff.
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By far the most important are, however, the records incised by or on behalf of the ruling authority. These inscriptions may be classified under such heads as: (1) royal edicts (e. g. the rock and pillar edicts⁴ of the Maurya emperor Aśoka), (2) epigraphs commemorating particular achievements of a king in a eulogistic *kāvya* or *praśasti*,⁵ (3) grants in favour of learned Brāhmaṇas, religious institutions or deserving individuals and officials, and (4) miscellaneous.
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⁴ Most of these edicts have several versions. There are also other cases of inscriptions having several versions. See *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 147 ff.
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⁵ The Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradāman I and the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta fall in this class. See *Select Inscriptions*, pp. 169ff.; 254 ff. In later epigraphs, the word *praśasti* often occurs about the end of the records to indicate the composition. In some cases, the word *pūrvā* is used instead of *praśasti* and it has been suggested that *pūrvā* and *praśasti* are synonyms (cf. *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXX, p. 123). But *pūrvā* really means ‘the above’, i.e. the above-quoted or above-mentioned thing in the feminine gender, and is often used with reference not only to *praśasti* but also to *tithi* or the lunar day. It has to be noticed that *pūrvā* is not recognised in the lexicons as a synonym of *praśasti* or *tithi*, even though it is very often found in epigraphic literature. The subject of the eulogies was generally called the *kīrti* of the person concerned. The word *kīrti* means ‘fame’, but is here used to indicate any performance (e.g., a temple, an image, a grant of land and the like) calculated to render the person responsible for it famous. The words *kīrtana* and *kīrtanā* are also sometimes used in the same sense. See *CII*, Vol. III, pp. 212-13, note; *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXVIII, p. 184; Vol. XXXIII, p. 170 (text line 2).
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Some of the epigraphic records, especially those of the eulogy type, were composed by poets of great ability and their compositions are of a high order. Mention may be made in this connection of Hariṣeṇa of the Allahabad pillar inscription (c. 360 A.D.)¹ of Samudragupta, Kubja of the Talagunda inscription (c. 460 A. D.)² of Śāntivarman, Vatsabhaṭṭi of the Mandasor inscription of 473 A.D.,³ Vāsula of the Mandasor inscription (c. 532 A.D.)⁴ of Yaśodharman, Ravikīrti of the Aihole inscription (634 A. D.)⁵ of Pulakeśin II, Chittapa of the Bhilsa inscription (c. 1050 A. D.),⁶ Vācaspati of the Bhubaneswar inscription (c. 1100 A. D.)⁷ of Bhavadeva-bhaṭṭa, and Umāpatidhara of the Deopada inscription (c. 1130 A. D.)⁸ of Vijayasena. Some of the authors of the epigraphic kāvyas are known only from the inscriptions, their other works being lost. It should be pointed out in this connection that private records were often composed by people of indifferent education and generally contain numerous errors of orthography and language. But epigraphs like the Chhoti Sadri inscription⁹ of Gauri and the Vasantgadh inscription¹⁰ of Pūrṇapāla show that sometimes even the Pandits at the kings' courts possessed very poor knowledge of the Sanskrit language.
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¹ Select Inscriptions, pp. 254 ff.
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² Ibid., pp. 450 ff.
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³ Ibid., pp. 288 ff.
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⁴ Ibid., 393 ff.
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⁵ Ep. Ind., Vol. VI, pp. 1 ff.
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⁶ Ibid., Vol. XXX, pp. 215 ff.
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⁷ Majumdar, Ins. Beng., Vol. III, pp. 25 ff.
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⁸ Ibid., pp. 35 ff.
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⁹ Ep. Ind., Vol. XXX, pp. 120 ff.
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¹⁰ Ibid., Vol. IX, pp. 10 ff.
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The epigraphs recording royal grants of land were generally engraved on copper plates and there gradually developed a tendency to introduce in the copper-plate grants an elaborate eulogy of the donor and his ancestors. Fairly detailed information about a king and his ancestors is often found in the elaborate praśastis on stone or copper plates, which are therefore of inestimable value for the reconstruction of ancient and medieval Indian history, especially because most of the facts supplied by them are in many cases not known from any other source. But, as indicated above, private records also often offer valuable information for the reconstruction of political and cultural history and on allied subjects.
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Excluding coins and seals bearing legends which are not inscriptions in the real sense, the largest number of Indian epigraphic records belong to the category of stone inscriptions. Most of the early *praśastis* are incised on stone—rocks, tablets or pillars, though, in the later period, they were also incorporated in royal charters engraved on copper plates as already indicated above.
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A few words may be added here about certain characteristics of Indian inscriptions though we shall have occasion to discuss many of them in detail separately. At the beginning of an inscription generally and also at its end occasionally, there is an auspicious symbol or word or a passage in adoration to a deity. The word *siddham* and *svasti* at the beginning of inscriptions are commonly found, though *siddham* gradually came to be represented by a symbol found at the beginning of numerous inscriptions. Among other auspicious symbols, occasionally we have the *svastika*,¹ the trident-on-wheel called *triratna*,² the *śrīvatsa*,³ the tree-in-railing,⁴ and certain unidentified symbols⁵ in early inscriptions.⁶
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¹ ASSI, Vol. I, Plate 69; ASWI, Vol. IV, Plate 49, Nos. 5-7, 9, 11, 13-14, etc.
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² ASWI, Vol. IV, Plate 49, Nos. 8, 10, 15, etc. It is sometimes called *nandipada* (Rapson's Catalogue, p. clxxv).
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³ See this together with the *svastika* symbol at the beginning of the Hathigumpha inscription of Khāravela (*Select Inscriptions*, Plate facing p. 208).
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⁴ This occurs at the end of the Hathigumpha inscription (ibid., Plate facing p. 209).
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⁵ ASWI, Vol. IV, Plate 44—Bhaja No. 7; Plate 45—Kuda Nos. 1, 6, 16; Plate 46—Kuda Nos. 20, 22, 24, 26.
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⁶ See also *Ep. Ind.*, Vol. XXXIII, p. 247 and Plate facing p. 251.
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Generally separation of words or their groups is not observed in inscriptions. In certain cases, some letters are found to be separated from others; but this was done without any system and probably according to the will of the scribe or engraver. Often the end of an epigraph was indicated by punctuation marks and occasionally the end of a sentence or section or the first or second half of a stanza was also likewise marked. At the end of a section, sometimes we have the representation of a lotus,¹ a floral design,² a circle³ and other symbols.⁴ In the upper part of a number of medieval inscriptions, there are such representations as the Śiva-liṅga, Nandin (Śiva's bull), a cow-with-calf, sun and moon, etc. Only in some cases an omission was indicated by a cross or kākapāda (or haṃsapāda) symbol and the omitted letter or letters were engraved in the margin.⁵ Letters wrongly engraved were occasionally erased by chiselling or the cancellation was indicated by one or more strokes.⁶
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. XVIII, Plate facing p. 96.
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² Ibid., Vol. II, Plate facing p. 120, text line 33.
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³ See ibid., Vol. XIV, Plate facing p. 185.
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⁴ See, e.g., ibid., Vol. XXX, Plate facing p. 124, text line 17.
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⁵ See ibid., Vol. XII, Plate facing p. 12, text line 1; Vol. II, Plate facing p. 276, text lines 8, 11 and 20.
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⁶ See ibid., Vol. I, Plate facing p. 254, text lines 1, 5; Ind. Ant., Vol. XIX, Plate facing p. 58, text line 16.
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Often, the names of the author, the writer and the engraver of a record were mentioned.⁷ The dates of the epigraphs sometimes record the year [of the regnal reckoning of a ruler or of an era], season, month, day, fortnight, tithi, etc.⁸
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⁷ See, e.g., the Arthuna inscription (1080 A.D.) of Paramāra Cāmuṇḍarāja (Bhandarkar's List, No. 145), which was composed by the poet Candra, written by the Vālabhya-Kāyastha Āsarāja and engraved by Cāmuṇḍaka.
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⁸ See Ep. Ind., Vol. I, pp. 381 and 384; Vol. VIII, p. 42.
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The practice of engraving eulogies on pillars or tablets of stone and charters on copper plates was not popular with the foreigners professing Islam, who conquered wide areas of India during the medieval period. They were used to the writing of books on history and issued their many farmāns generally on paper. It was the Muhammadans who were responsible for the popularity of paper in India as a writing material. The increase in the popularity of the practice of writing on paper gradually led to the decline of the custom of engraving inscriptions on stone and copper. Another factor contributing to the decline is that the number of independent Hindu rulers, who would have followed the old convention, gradually became fewer and fewer. Indeed we have copper-plate charters issued by the kings of Tripura and Assam as late as the 18th century⁹ and the engraving of pilgrims' records at holy places is popular even today in accordance with the old custom. The final blow to the practice of incising eulogies on stone was delivered by the introduction of the printing press and to that of engraving charters on copper plates by the system of registering documents introduced by the British administration.
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⁹ See A. R. Ep., 1957-58, Nos. A 3-5.