Indian epigraphy

Indian epigraphy
Sachin kumar tiwary · CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
Name	Indian epigraphy
Country	India
Disciplines	Epigraphy, Paleography, Archaeology, Linguistics
Notable institutions	Archaeological Survey of India, British Museum, Indian Museum, Bodleian Library
Notable scholars	James Prinsep, Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, Iravatham Mahadevan, D. C. Sircar, H. K. Thapar

Indian epigraphy provides the corpus of inscriptions that illuminate the political, religious, social, and economic life of the South Asian subcontinent from the Harappan era to the modern period. It encompasses stone, metal, clay, and painted records associated with imperial capitals, temple complexes, urban settlements, and trade routes across regions such as the Indo-Gangetic Plain, Deccan Plateau, and Sri Lanka. Scholars across institutions study scripts, languages, paleography, and material contexts to reconstruct chronologies for dynasties, religious movements, and cultural exchanges.

Overview and Scope

Epigraphic evidence in India spans empires and polities including the Maurya Empire, Gupta Empire, Chola dynasty, Vijayanagara Empire, Mughal Empire, Maratha Empire, Satavahana dynasty, and regional kingdoms such as the Pallava dynasty, Kadamba dynasty, Rashtrakuta dynasty, Hoysala Empire, Kakatiya dynasty, and Cheras. Collections are held by institutions like the Archaeological Survey of India, British Museum, Asiatic Society of Bengal, Indian Museum, Bodleian Library, and the National Museum, New Delhi. Epigraphy informs studies of rulers such as Ashoka, Kharavela, Samudragupta, Harsha, Raja Raja Chola I, Krishnadevaraya, Akbar, and Shivaji. Inscriptional corpora and publication projects include the Epigraphia Indica, South Indian Inscriptions, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, and regional gazetteers.

History and Development

The study of inscriptions accelerated under colonial-era scholarship exemplified by figures like James Prinsep, Alexander Cunningham, William Muir, F. Kielhorn, and Hermann Goetz. Post-independence scholars such as D. C. Sircar, S. R. Goyal, Iravatham Mahadevan, R. Nagaswamy, K. V. Raman, and B. Chattopadhyaya expanded decipherment and contextualization. Key projects include surveys by the Archaeological Survey of India, excavations at Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Sanchi, Ellora, Ajanta, and fieldwork at sites like Sirkap, Pataliputra, Sravasti, Madurai, and Hampi. International collaborations link institutions such as the British Library, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University of Oxford, École française d'Extrême-Orient, and School of Oriental and African Studies.

Scripts and Languages Used

Inscriptional languages include Prakrit, Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Persian, and Arabic. Scripts employed encompass Brahmi script, Kharosthi script, Grantha script, Tamil-Brahmi, Vatteluttu, Pallava script, Kannada script, Telugu-Kannada script, Devanagari script, Sharada script, Gujarati script, Bengali script, and Perso-Arabic script. Early decipherments involved comparisons with Achaemenid Empire inscriptions, Greek language sources from Alexandria, and multilingual monuments like the Heliodorus pillar and imperial edicts of Ashoka.

Materials and Techniques

Inscriptional media include stone stelae, cave walls, temple pillars, copper plates, coins, clay tablets, terracotta seals, pottery sherds, and palm-leaf manuscripts preserved in sites such as Sanchi Stupa, Brihadeeswarar Temple, Gangaikonda Cholapuram, Sun Temple, Konark, Mahabodhi Temple, Meenakshi Amman Temple, and Kailasa Temple, Ellora. Techniques range from incised chiseling and punch-marking on coins to engraving on metal plates used by courts such as the Chalukya dynasty and Pandyas. Preservation and conservation efforts are coordinated by agencies like the Archaeological Survey of India, State Archaeology Department (Tamil Nadu), and international bodies including the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

Major Inscriptions and Sites

Prominent texts and monuments include the Ashoka Pillars and edicts, the Rummindei Inscription, the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela, the Mehrauli Iron Pillar, the Allahabad Pillar inscription of Samudragupta, the Aihole inscription, the Kailasanatha Temple inscriptions, the Tiruvallam grant, the Sangam age Tamil inscriptions, the Chola bronzes inscriptions, the Copper Plate Grants like the Kolar copper-plate and Brahmi copper plates, the Nasik Prakrit inscriptions, and medieval Persian inscriptions from the Mughal Empire such as those at Fatehpur Sikri and Agra Fort. Epigraphic landscapes include urban centers like Pataliputra, Taxila, Madurai, Thanjavur, Hampi, Ahmadnagar, and island sites like Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa.

Methods of Decipherment and Dating

Decipherment employs comparative paleography, philology, and bilingual inscriptions such as the Heliodorus pillar and multilingual coins from Indo-Greek Kingdoms and Kushan Empire. Dating methods integrate stratigraphy from excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, radiocarbon dating of associated organic material from Arikamedu and Bankipore, paleographic sequencing used by scholars like James Prinsep and D. C. Sircar, and numismatic cross-dating with issues of rulers like Menander I and Kanishka. Epigraphers use diplomatic formulas, honorifics, regnal lists, and synchronisms with inscriptions from Sasanian Empire and Byzantine Empire sources to refine chronologies.

Significance for History and Archaeology

Inscriptions provide primary evidence for dynastic succession, administrative practices, land grants, temple endowments, trade networks, legal codes, and religious patronage across contexts involving Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Islam, and regional cults. They link material culture from excavations at Sirkap and Ujjain to textual traditions like the Mahabharata and Ramayana and to legal texts such as the Manusmriti via concrete legal instruments. Epigraphy has reshaped understandings of state formation under the Maurya Empire, urbanization in the Gupta Empire, maritime commerce on the Coromandel Coast and Malabar Coast, and imperial ideology in the Mughal Empire.

Category:Epigraphy Category:Indian history Category:Archaeology of India