INSCRIPTIONS

The Antiquity and Variety of Scripts

There are two main varieties of scripts in early historical India: Brahmi and Kharoshthi (written also as Kharoshti and Kharoshtri but ‘Kharoshthi’ is the commonly used term). The Kharoshthi script was limited only to the north-western part of India. When found outside this region, this has to be interpreted in terms of the presence of Kharoshthi-writers in the territory concerned. The earliest documented use of this script is in the Asokan edicts and the most recent examples date from the fourth–fifth centuries AD. The use of this script was thus comparatively short-lived. Its origin is possibly rooted in the Aramaic script introduced during the Achaemenid rule of north-western India, and the theory is based on the likeness of many signs having similar phonetic value and the direction of writing from right to left. However, two points may be noted. First, certain signs were borrowed, certain signs derived and certain signs added. Second, the probability of its being earlier in the interests of the Achaemenid administration need not be denied.

The ‘Brahmi’ script has a pan-Indian distribution, lies at the roots of the major modern Indian scripts and has even influenced some scripts in central Asia, Tibet and south-east Asia. When it first appears in the Asokan inscriptions it has wide variations in the form of letters, which have been explained as local varieties: Northern and Southern, and the presence of cursive and advanced forms of letters. The general consensus is that the Brahmi script began before Asoka. Literary evidence of all kinds suggests that the antiquity of the script in India goes back at least to the eighth/seventh century BC, a date which fits in well with the date of the beginning of NBP as the archaeological marker of early historic period in the Gangetic valley. Now that we know that the tradition of Indian writing continued in the late Harappan stage down to c. 1300 BC, the time-gap between the end of the Indus civilization and the beginning of early history is less than what used to be thought before. Besides, as we now know that the Harappans closely interacted with the neolithic–chalcolithic communities outside their distribution area, it may not be illogical to think that the Indus writing tradition lingered on in perishable medium till the dictates of the new socio-economic contexts of early historic India led to its resurgence in a changed form. The earlier notion that the idea of alphabetic writing was adopted in Brahmi from the Aramaic has academically nothing to recommend, despite its resurgence in a new form after the discovery of some potsherds with fragmentary Brahmi inscriptions in contexts dated c. 450–350 BC at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka. This discovery only confirms that the archaeological evidence of the Brahmi script is earlier than what was thought and that the many Tamil–Brahmi inscriptions found in south India should be equally early.

Contents and Styles of Early Inscriptions

Mauryan and Post-Mauryan⁴

The earliest recorded instances of historic inscriptions, i.e. the inscriptions of Asoka, have been found, category-wise, at the following places (unless otherwise stated, the script is Brahmi):

A brief allusion to the contents of Asokan inscriptions may be offered on the basis of E. Hultzsch’s Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, volume I (1925).

On the whole, these inscriptions are non-political, concerned with Asoka’s concept of morality or ‘dhamma’ and eagerness to tell his subjects about it. Whatever historical information can be gleaned from them is only incidental. At the same time, the tone of these inscriptions is assured. The monarch was completely secure in his domain, and there is an easy knowledge of the world up to Egypt and Greece.

The post-Asokan inscriptions of the late centuries BC and a little later undergo a sea-change and record mostly the gifts of various ordinary classes of people towards the construction of Buddhist stupas. It is for the first time that ordinary people of ancient India declare themselves directly to us, appearing in all guises: monks, lay teachers, wives, daughters, merchants, bankers, artisans, blacksmiths and others. The names are all familiar and still around us. A distinct secular note is struck by the Jogimara cave inscription (Surguja, MP) which declares that a temple-servant, ‘Sutanuka’ (‘the well-limbed one’), was loved by a scribe/sculptor, ‘Devadinna’ of Banaras.

Inscriptions of the Early Centuries AD⁵

As an inscription of the early centuries ad one may cite the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman and the Nasik cave inscriptions of Ushavadata, both distinctive in their own ways. The Rudradaman inscription is on the Girnar hill and dated mid-second century AD. The aim was to record the restoration of the lake Sudarsana which was originally constructed during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya by his provincial governor, Pushyagupta of the Vaisya caste and was adorned with a conduit during the reign of Asoka by his provincial governor ‘yavana king’ Tushaspha. It was destroyed in a storm during the reign of Rudradaman and the restoration work was carried out by his provincial governor, Suvisakha, a Parthian whose father’s name was Kulaipa. How a man in the mid-second-century AD could make references to the history of this lake stretching back to the late fourth century BC is not known; obviously there was a system of record-keeping on perishable materials in ancient India, which has not reached us. This impression is further accentuated by the Nasik cave inscriptions 10 and 12 of Ushavadata, the son-in-law of the Kshatrapa king of western India, Nahapana, of a somewhat earlier period. The list of the royal son-in-law’s munificence, as listed in Nasik cave inscription 10, is most impressive and extended down to the ‘giving of eight wives to Brahmanas’ at the religious centre of Prabhasa in Saurashtra and the establishment of free ferries by boats on a number of rivers including the Tapti. In inscription 12, among other things, he invests a large amount of money in a weavers’ guild and arranges for the upkeep of monks in this cave at Nasik out of the accrued interest: ‘all this has been proclaimed and registered at the town’s hall, at the record office.’

The inscriptions dating from the Kushana rule conform to the pattern. A two-line inscription engraved on the pedestal of an image (possibly) from Mathura records that this Buddha image which was sculpted by Visasvin was the gift of Raha, the wife of a ploughman, in the fourth month of ‘hemanta’ or winter season of the year 50 of the reign of ‘son of god’, Huva or Huvishka. One of the earliest Tamil–Brahmi inscriptions found in the rock-cut caves of Arittapatti or Mangulam in the Madurai area reads, in T.V. Mahalingam’s translation, the following: ‘Yaka Siti, the daughter of a citizen of Velladai, caused to be made (this cave) and Cattan Pinakkan had it cut.’

Epigraphy is, no doubt, a specialized branch of study concerned with the actual style of the script used, the language, the meaning of technical terms, the analysis of the information contained in the context of what we already know of the period and of its kings, and a host of such other issues. At the same time, inscriptions are also the most direct, and, in many cases, individually identifiable messages from the past to us. The style of the engraved letters can also be a chronological marker, but—it has to be emphasized—only within a broad period.