Early Indian epigraphy
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The earliest undisputed deciphered
epigraphy Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...
found in the Indian subcontinent are the Edicts of Ashoka of the 3rd century BCE, in the Brahmi script. If epigraphy of proto-writing is included, undeciphered markings with symbol systems that may or may not contain linguistic information, there is substantially older epigraphy in the Indus script, which dates back to the early 3rd millennium BCE. Two other important archeological classes of symbols are found from the 1st millennium BCE, Megalithic graffiti symbols and symbols on punch-marked coins, though most scholars do not consider these to constitute fully linguistic scripts, and their
semiotic Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
functions are not well understood. Writing in Sanskrit (Epigraphical Hybrid Sanskrit, EHS) appears in the 1st to 4th centuries CE. Indian epigraphy becomes more widespread over the 1st millennium, engraved on the faces of cliffs, on pillars, on tablets of stone, drawn in caves and on rocks, some gouged into the bedrock. Later they were also inscribed on palm leaves, coins, Indian copper plate inscriptions, and on temple walls. Many of the inscriptions are couched in extravagant language, but when the information gained from inscriptions can be corroborated with information from other sources such as still existing monuments or ruins, inscriptions provide insight into India's dynastic history that otherwise lacks contemporary historical records. Of the c. 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India, about 60,000 were in Tamil Nadu;. Over 25,000 Kannada inscriptions were unearthed in Karnataka, though an in depth study of many of these is yet to be conducted according to Hampi Kannada University Sociology department Head and Researcher Devara Kondareddy. Over 14,000 inscriptions belonging to the Telugu language were excavated in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This makes Tamil and the two South Indian languages( Kannada and Telugu) the most densely inscribed languages in the country.


First appearance of writing in the Indian Subcontinent

The Bronze Age Indus script remains undeciphered and may not actually represent a writing system. Hence, the first undisputed evidence of writing in the Indian Subcontinent are the Edicts of Ashoka from c. 250 BCE. Several inscriptions were thought to be pre-Ashokan by earlier scholars; these include the Piprahwa relic casket inscription, the Badli pillar inscription, the Bhattiprolu relic casket inscription, the
Sohgaura copper plate inscription The Sohgaura copper plate inscription is an Indian copper plate inscription written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script. It was discovered in Sohgaura, a village on the banks of the Rapti River, about 20 km south-east of Gorakhpur, in the Gorakh ...
, the Mahasthangarh Brahmi inscription, the Eran coin legend, the
Taxila Taxila or Takshashila (; sa, तक्षशिला; pi, ; , ; , ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan. Located in the Taxila Tehsil of Rawalpindi District, it lies approximately northwest of the Islamabad–Rawalpindi metropolitan area and ...
coin legends, and the inscription on the silver coins of Sophytes. However, more recent scholars have dated them to later periods. Until the 1990s, it was generally accepted that the Brahmi script used by Ashoka spread to South India during the second half of the 3rd century BCE, assuming a local form now known as Tamil-Brahmi. Beginning in the late 1990s, archaeological excavations have produced a small number of candidates for Brahmi epigraphy predating Ashoka. Preliminary press reports of such pre-Ashokan inscriptions have appeared over the years, such as
Palani Palani ( or ''Palni'' as in British records, is a town and a taluk headquarters in Dindigul district of the western part of Tamil Nadu state in India. It is located about south-east of Coimbatore and north-west of Madurai, from Kodaikanal ...
,Porunthal excavations prove existence of Indian scripts in 5th century BCE: expert
/ref> Erode, and Adichanallur, dated to c. 500 BCE, but so far only the claimed pre-Ashokan inscriptions at Anuradhapura have been published in an internationally recognised academic journal.


History and research

Since 1886 there have been systematic attempts to collect and catalogue these inscriptions, along with the translation and publication of documents. Inscriptions may be in the Brahmi or Tamil-Brahmi script. Royal inscriptions were also engraved on copper-plates as were the Indian copper plate inscriptions. The Edicts of Ashoka contain Brahmi script and its regional variant, Tamil-Brahmi, was an early script used in the inscriptions in cave walls of Tamil Nadu and later evolved into the Tamil
Vatteluttu alphabet ''Vatteluttu,'' popularly romanised as ''Vattezhuthu'' ( ta, வட்டெழுத்து, ' and ml, വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, ', ), was a syllabic alphabet of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka used for writing t ...
. The
Bhattiprolu alphabet The Bhattiprolu script is a variant of the Brahmi script which has been found in old inscriptions at Bhattiprolu, a small village in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, South India. It is located in the fertile Krishna river delta and the estuar ...
, as well as a variant of Brahmi, the Kadamba alphabet, of the early centuries BCE gave rise to the Telugu-Kannada alphabet, which developed into the Kannada and Telugu scripts.


Notable inscriptions

Important inscriptions include the 33 inscriptions of emperor Ashoka on the Pillars of Ashoka (272 to 231 BCE), the
Sohgaura copper plate inscription The Sohgaura copper plate inscription is an Indian copper plate inscription written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script. It was discovered in Sohgaura, a village on the banks of the Rapti River, about 20 km south-east of Gorakhpur, in the Gorakh ...
(earliest known example of the copper plate type and generally assigned to the Mauryan period, though the exact date is uncertain), the Hathigumpha inscription of Kharavela (2nd century BCE), the Besnagar pillar inscription of
Heliodorus Heliodorus is a Greek name meaning "Gift of the Sun". Several persons named Heliodorus are known to us from ancient times, the best known of which are: *Heliodorus (minister) a minister of Seleucus IV Philopator c. 175 BC * Heliodorus of Athen ...
, the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman I (150 CE), the
Nasik Nashik (, Marathi: aːʃik, also called as Nasik ) is a city in the northern region of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Situated on the banks of river Godavari, Nashik is the third largest city in Maharashtra, after Mumbai and Pune. Nashik ...
cave inscriptions, the Rabatak inscription, the Allahabad Pillar inscription of Samudragupta, the
Aihole inscription The Aihole Inscription, also known as the Aihole ''prashasti'', is a nineteen line Sanskrit inscription at Meguti Jain temple in Aihole, Karnataka, India. An eulogy dated 634–635 CE, it was composed by the Jain poet Ravikirti in honor of his p ...
of
Pulakesi II Pulakeshin II (IAST: Pulakeśin, r. c. 610–642 CE) was the most famous ruler of the Chalukya dynasty of Vatapi (present-day Badami in Karnataka, India). During his reign, the Chalukya kingdom expanded to cover most of the Deccan region in p ...
(634 CE), the Kannada
Halmidi inscription The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada language inscription in the Kadamba script. While estimates vary slightly, the inscription is often dated to between 450 CE - 500 CE. The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H. Krishn ...
, and the Tamil copper-plate inscriptions. The oldest known inscription in the
Kannada language Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native sp ...
, referred to as the
Halmidi inscription The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada language inscription in the Kadamba script. While estimates vary slightly, the inscription is often dated to between 450 CE - 500 CE. The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H. Krishn ...
for the tiny village of
Halmidi Halmidi is a small village in the Hassan district of Karnataka state, India, near the temple town of Belur. Halmidi is best known as the place where the oldest known inscription exclusively in Kannada language, the Halmidi inscription, was di ...
near where it was found, consists of sixteen lines carved on a sandstone pillar and dates to 450 CE. Reports indicate that the Nishadi Inscription. of Chandragiri which is in Old-Kannada is older than Halmidi by about 50 to 100 years and may belong to c. 350 CE or c. 400 CE.


Hathigumpha inscription

The Hathigumpha inscription ("Elephant Cave" inscription) from Udayagiri near
Bhubaneshwar Bhubaneswar (; ) is the capital and largest city of the States and territories of India, Indian state of Odisha. The region, especially the old town, was historically often depicted as ''Ekamra Kshetra'' (area (''kshetra'') adorned with mango tr ...
in Orissa was written by Kharavela, the king of Kalinga in India during the 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription consists of seventeen lines incised in deep cut Brahmi letters on the overhanging brow of a natural cavern called Hathigumpha on the southern side of the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar in Orissa. It faces straight toward the rock Edicts of Asoka at
Dhauli Dhauli or Dhauligiri is a hill located on the banks of the river Daya River, Daya, 8 km south of Bhubaneswar in Odisha, India. Significance Dhauli known for "Dhauli Santi Stupa", a peace pagoda monument which witnesses the great Kalinga ...
located about six miles away.


Rabatak inscription

The Rabatak inscription is written on a rock in the
Bactrian language Bactrian (, , ) is an extinct Eastern Iranian language formerly spoken in the Central Asian region of Bactria (in present-day Afghanistan) and used as the official language of the Kushan, and the Hephthalite empires. Name It was long thought t ...
and
Greek script The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
and found in 1993 at the site of Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan. The inscription relates to the rule of the Kushan emperor Kanishka and gives remarkable clues to the genealogy of the Kushan dynasty.


Halmidi inscription

The
Halmidi inscription The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada language inscription in the Kadamba script. While estimates vary slightly, the inscription is often dated to between 450 CE - 500 CE. The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H. Krishn ...
is the oldest known inscription in the Kannada language. The inscription is carved on a pillar, that was discovered in the village of
Halmidi Halmidi is a small village in the Hassan district of Karnataka state, India, near the temple town of Belur. Halmidi is best known as the place where the oldest known inscription exclusively in Kannada language, the Halmidi inscription, was di ...
, a few miles from the famous temple town of Belur, Karnataka, Belur in the Hassan district of Karnataka, and is dated 450 CE. The original inscription has now been deposited in an archaeology, archaeological museum in Bangalore while a fibreglass replica has been installed at Halmidi.


Tamil copper-plate inscriptions

Tamil copper-plate inscriptions are mostly records of Land grant, grants of villages or plots of cultivable lands to private individuals or public institutions by the members of the various South Indian royal dynasties. The grants range in date from the 10th century CE to the mid-19th century CE. A large number of them belong to the Cholas and the Vijayanagara Empire, Vijayanagara kings. These plates are valuable epigraphy, epigraphically as they give us an insight into the social conditions of medieval South India and help fill chronological gaps to connect the history of the ruling dynasties. File:Dharmeshwara Temple Plates.jpg, Plate 1 and Back File:Dharmeshwara Temple Plates HT-34.jpg, Plate 2 Unlike the neighbouring states where early inscriptions were written in Sanskrit and Prakrit, the early inscriptions in Tamil Nadu used Tamil along with some Prakrit. Tamil has the extant literature amongst the Dravidian languages, but dating the language and the literature precisely is difficult. Literary works in India were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making direct dating impossible. External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that extant works were probably compiled sometime between the 4th century BCE and the 3rd century CE.George Hart, "Some Related Literary Conventions in Tamil and Indo-Aryan and Their Significance" ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', 94:2 (Apr – Jun 1974), pp. 157-167.Kamil Veith Zvelebil, ''Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature'', pp12Nilakanta Sastri, K.A. (1955). A History of South India, OUP, New Delhi (Reprinted 2002) Epigraphic attestation of Tamil begins with rock inscriptions from the 3rd century BCE, written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script. The earliest extant literary text is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, Date of the Tolkappiyam, dated variously between the 5th century BCE and the 2nd century CE.


Shankarpur copper-plate of Budhagupta

The plate is a record documenting a donation in the reign of king Budhagupta (''circa'' CE 477–88) in year 168 of the Gupta era. The date is equivalent to CE 487–88. The plate was found in Shankarpur, Sidhi District, Madhya Pradesh, India. The plate is currently stored in the Rani Durgawati Museum, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. The copper plate is 24 cm x 11 cm. The inscription on the plate records that in the reign of Budhagupta, a ruler named ''mahārāja'' Gītavarman, grandson of ''mahārāja'' Vijayavarman and ''mahārāja'' Harivarman son of Rānī Svaminī and ''mahārāja'' Harivarman, donated a village named Citrapalli to a Gosvāmi brāhmaṇa. The text was written by Dūtaka Rūparāja(?), son of Nāgaśarma. The inscription was published by B. C. Jain in 1977. It was subsequently listed by Madan Mohan Upadhyaya in his book ''Inscriptions of Mahakoshal''. The inscription is of considerable importance for the history of the Gupta Empire, because it is the last known record of the later Gupta king Budhagupta. Moreover, it provides a secure date for Harivarman, the first recorded king of the Maukhari dynasty according to the Asīrgarh seal.
siddham [, , ] samvatsara-ṣa(śa)te=ṣṭsa=ṣaṣṭyuta (yutta)re mahāmāgha-samvatsara(re) Śrāvaṇa ... myāṃ paramadeva-Budhagupte rājani asyāṃ divasa-pūrvāyāṃ śrī-mahārāja-Sāṭana Sāla (or rya) na kul-odbhūtena śrī-mahārāja [Gī]tavarman-pautreṇa śrīmahārāja-Vijayavarmma-sute[na] mahādevyā[ṃ] Śarv asvāminyām utpanneana śri mahārāja Harivarmmaṇā asya brāhmaṇa-Kautsa- sagotra-gosvāmina [e]tac=Citrapalya tāmu(mra)paṭṭen=āgrahāro-tisṛṣṭaḥ akaraḥ acaṭa-bhaṭṭa-pra- veśyaḥ [, *] candra-tār-ārkka-samakālīyaḥ uktañca bhagavatā vyāsena [, *] svadattām= paradattāṃ=vā yo hareta vasundharā(rāṃ) [, *] s(ś)va vis(ṣ)ṭhāyā(yāṃ) kṛmir=bhūtvā pitṛbhis=saha majyate [, , *] bahubhirv=vasudhā bhuktā rājabhiḥ=sagar-ādibhi (bhiḥ) [, *] yasya yasya yadā bhūmis=tasya tasya tadā phalaṃ [, , *] kumārāmatya-bhagavad-rudrachadi-bhogika-mahāpratīhāra-lavaṇaḥ bapidra-bhogika (ke) [na] dūtaka(ke)na likhitaṃ Śrī Yaṣṭarājena Nāga(sa)śarma-su[tena] [, , *]Shankarpur copper-plate of the time of Buddhagupta GE 168
/ref>


See also

* Related topics ** Ancient inscriptions Of Raju Rulers ** Ancient iron production ** Ashokan Edicts in Delhi ** Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts ** Dhar iron pillar ** History of metallurgy in South Asia ** Iron pillar of Delhi ** Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman ** List of Edicts of Ashoka ** Pillars of Ashoka ** Stambha ** Tosham rock inscription ** Tamil inscriptions * Other similar topics ** Early Indians ** Brāhmī script ** Heliodorus pillar ** Indus script ** List of Indus Valley Civilization sites ** Hindu temple architecture ** History of India ** Indian copper plate inscriptions ** Indian rock-cut architecture ** List of rock-cut temples in India ** Outline of ancient India ** South Indian Inscriptions ** Tagundaing


Notes


References

* Salomon, Richard, ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages'', Oxford University Press, 1998, * Murugaiyan, Appasamy & Parlier-Renault, Édith (2021) (Eds
Whispering of Inscriptions: South Indian Epigraphy and Art History: Papers from an International Symposium in memory of Professor Noboru Karashima (Paris, 12–13 October 2017)
Oxford: Indica et Buddhica. (2 vols) v. 1, ISBN 978-0-473-56774-3. v. 2, ISBN 978-0-473-56777-4. (Open access PDFs) *


External links



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{{DEFAULTSORT:Early Indian Epigraphy Indian inscriptions Linguistic history of India Epigraphy