Indian Epigraphy c7.s3.4

c7.s3.4

The earliest Indo-Muslim inscriptions are in Arabic except the epigraph in the Quwwatu’l Islām mosque at Delhi, which is written in Arabic and Persian. Its date is 1191-92 A.D., though it may have been set up some years later. Arabic continued to be the language of Indo-Muslim epigraphy till the latest decades of the 13th century. But, with the rise of the Khaljīs, from about the beginning of the 14th century, Persian is found more frequently in epigraphical records and its popularity gradually increased, though Arabic was not totally ousted since religious inscriptions continued to be written in that language. Arabic was more popular than Persian in Bengal. With the establishment of Mughal rule in India in the 16th century, Persian began to be generally used in State records as well as in inscriptions and, in the first half of the 18th century, it ousted Arabic almost completely. There is an Urdū inscription of the middle of the 18th century.²