Epigraphy

Also called: Epigraphist · Topic: Studying Indian History: Sources, Dating and Historiography · NCERT: Class 6, Ch 4 "Timeline and Sources of History"; Class 7, Ch 5 "The Rise of Empires"; Class 7, Ch 6 "The Age of Reorganisation"; Class 7, Ch 7 "The Gupta Era: An Age of Tireless Creativity"; Class 12, Ch 2 "Kings, Farmers and Towns"

Meaning

Epigraphy is the study of inscriptions, which are writings cut or engraved on hard surfaces such as stone, metal (copper plates, coins) and pottery. Inscriptions last almost forever, so they are first-hand records from the time of the events. Reading them, especially after James Prinsep deciphered Brahmi and Kharosthi in the 1830s, gave historians the basic outline of early Indian political history.

Explanation

What inscriptions are and why they matter

• An inscription records what the person who ordered it wanted people to remember:
• a king's victories
• a gift of land or money
• an order to the people

• a religious idea

• Their big advantage is that they are virtually permanent.

• Manuscripts rot and have to be copied again and again. Mistakes creep in with each copy.

• Words cut in stone or metal stay as they were first written.

• The Epigraphy Branch of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) studies writing on stone, metal, wood and shell. It uses these records to rebuild political, dynastic, social, religious, administrative and economic history from the Mauryan period onwards. [3]

• The ASI estimates that more than one lakh (100,000+) inscriptions have been found across India so far. [3]

Main features: dating, languages, scripts and types

• Dating an inscription:
• Direct dating: the inscription gives a year itself, either a regnal year (the year of the king's reign) or a year in an era.

• Palaeography: the study of old letter shapes. Letters changed slowly over the centuries. The letter "a" of about 250 BCE looks different from the "a" of about 500 CE. So even an undated inscription can be placed roughly in time by comparing its letters with dated ones.

• Languages:

• The earliest inscriptions are in Prakrit, the everyday languages ordinary people spoke. They are not in Sanskrit, the language of priests.
• Later and other inscriptions use Pali, Tamil and Sanskrit.

• ASI's Epigraphy Branch works on both Dravidian and Sanskritic epigraphy. [3]

• Scripts in Asoka's inscriptions:

• Most of India: Prakrit in the Brahmi script.
• North-west: Prakrit in the Kharosthi script.
• Afghanistan: Aramaic and Greek.

• Brahmi is the parent of most later Indian scripts, including Devanagari, and of the scripts used for Dravidian languages. [4]

• Two main types of inscription:

• Votive inscriptions are short records of gifts, found from the 2nd century BCE onwards.
  • They name the donor and often the donor's job: washerfolk, weavers, scribes, carpenters, potters, goldsmiths, officials, merchants and kings.
  • Both men and women gave gifts to religious institutions.
  • Ordinary working people almost never appear in literary texts. In these inscriptions they name themselves, which makes them very valuable to historians.
• Prashastis are long poems written by court poets in praise of a king.
  • They were meant to be admired as poetry, not as a neutral record.
  • Historians still take facts from them, but they must separate the facts from the flattery.

How decipherment happened (1830s)

• James Prinsep was an officer in the East India Company mint. He deciphered both Brahmi and Kharosthi.
• He was assay master (the officer who tests the purity of the metal in coins) at the Benares (Varanasi) mint, 1820–30, and became assay master at the Calcutta mint in 1832. He left for England in 1838 because of ill health. [2]
• Because of this job he handled thousands of old coins and the writing on them.

• He was the first European scholar to decipher Asoka's edicts. [2]

• Cracking Brahmi:

• European scholars, helped by Indian pandits, worked backwards from letter shapes they already knew, Bengali and Devanagari, to the older Brahmi forms.
• Early attempts failed because scholars wrongly assumed the language was Sanskrit. It was Prakrit.

• Asokan Brahmi was read in 1838, according to NCERT. Britannica gives 1837. [2] Use 1838 in the exam.

• Cracking Kharosthi:

• Indo-Greek coins of about the 2nd–1st centuries BCE carried the same king's name in both Greek and Kharosthi (for example, Apollodotus).
• Greek letters could already be read, so each Kharosthi letter was matched to its Greek partner, one by one.
• Prinsep then showed that the language of these records was Prakrit.

• This is the same method that cracked Egyptian hieroglyphs: a bilingual text where one side can already be read.

• Proving that Piyadassi was Asoka:

• Most inscriptions do not use the name "Asoka". They use titles:
  • devanampiya ("beloved of the gods")
  • piyadassi ("pleasant to behold")
• A few inscriptions also carry the name Asoka, a king already known from Buddhist texts.
• Scholars compared the content, style, language and palaeography of all the inscriptions and decided that one ruler issued them all.
• Result: the king of the inscriptions and the Asoka of the texts are the same person. Inscriptions and literature could now be read together.
• Before this, Asoka was almost unknown except through Sri Lankan Buddhist chronicles and northern Buddhist works. [2]

How epigraphists work and what changed as a result

• Filling gaps: stones are often broken or worn, with letters missing. Epigraphists add words in square brackets to make the meaning clear, without changing what the writer meant.
• Testing claims instead of simply believing them:
• Asoka says earlier rulers had "no arrangements for receiving reports", while his own pativedakas (reporters) brought him news at all times and in all places.
• Historians ask whether this is true, plausible or exaggerated.

• A king praising his own new system has a reason to run down the past. So the line proves what Asoka claimed, not what actually happened before him.

• Results:

• By the early 20th century, the broad outline of dynastic political history (which king, which dynasty, roughly when) was settled.
• Historians then moved to a harder question: context. How did political change connect with economic and social change? These links are rarely simple.

Time, place and evidence

• Period covered: inscriptions are used for history from the Mauryan period onwards. [3] Votive inscriptions begin in the 2nd century BCE. Indo-Greek bilingual coins date from about the 2nd–1st centuries BCE.
• Key people:
• Colin Mackenzie: collected over 8,000 Sanskrit and Dravidian inscriptions in the 1810s.
• James Prinsep: an East India Company mint officer at Benares and Calcutta who read Brahmi and Kharosthi. [2]
• Alexander Cunningham: published the set of Asokan inscriptions in 1877.

• D.C. Sircar: published Indian Epigraphy and Indian Epigraphical Glossary in 1965–66.

• Institutions and series:

• 1886: Epigraphia Carnatica begins. The same year, the ASI Epigraphy Branch is set up at Bangalore.
• 1888: Epigraphia Indica begins.
• The Branch moved to Ootacamund in 1903, stayed there till 1966, then shifted to Mysore, where it still works. [3]

• ASI also publishes the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. [3]

• Key evidence: Asokan inscriptions (Brahmi, Kharosthi, Aramaic, Greek), Indo-Greek coins naming Apollodotus, votive inscriptions, prashastis and copper plates.

Don't confuse with

• Palaeography is the study of old letter shapes and styles of writing, used to date a text. Epigraphy is the study of the inscription as a whole: its text, language, meaning and context. Palaeography is one tool that epigraphy uses.
• Numismatics is the study of coins. Coins with writing on them, such as the Indo-Greek coins of Apollodotus, are useful to both subjects, but numismatics also studies weight, metal and design.
• Votive inscription vs prashasti: a votive inscription is a short gift record naming a donor (often an ordinary person) and their job. A prashasti is a long praise-poem for a king by a court poet.
• Brahmi vs Kharosthi: Brahmi was used across most of India and is the parent of Devanagari and the scripts of Dravidian languages. [4] Kharosthi was used in the north-west and was cracked using bilingual Greek–Kharosthi coins, not by working backwards from Bengali and Devanagari.

Prelims Hooks

• James Prinsep, an officer of the East India Company mint (assay master at Benares 1820–30 and Calcutta from 1832), deciphered Brahmi and Kharosthi. Asokan Brahmi was read in 1838 (NCERT); Britannica gives 1837. [2]
• Trap: the earliest Indian inscriptions are in Prakrit, not Sanskrit. Assuming Sanskrit is exactly why early attempts to read Brahmi failed.
• Scripts and languages of Asoka's inscriptions: Brahmi for most of India, Kharosthi in the north-west, Aramaic and Greek in Afghanistan.
• Kharosthi was decoded from bilingual Indo-Greek coins (c. 2nd–1st centuries BCE) of kings such as Apollodotus. devanampiya = "beloved of the gods"; piyadassi = "pleasant to behold".
• Order of events: Mackenzie collection (1810s) → Prinsep reads Brahmi (1838) → Cunningham's Asokan inscriptions (1877) → Epigraphia Carnatica and the Epigraphy Branch at Bangalore (1886) → Epigraphia Indica (1888) → D.C. Sircar's Indian Epigraphy (1965–66).
• ASI Epigraphy Branch: Bangalore (1886) → Ootacamund (1903–1966) → Mysore. More than one lakh inscriptions have been found in India. [3]

Mains Points

• Inscriptions are permanent but give only part of the picture.
• They outlast manuscripts and were written at the time of the events.
• But only kings, donors and religious institutions could pay to have stone cut. Many inscriptions are lost, broken or hard to read.

• So the record leans towards the powerful. Historians must cross-check it with texts, coins and archaeology, and ask who paid for the stone and why. Prashastis flatter, and Asoka's claim about earlier kings serves his own interest.

• Decipherment was a colonial project carried out with Indian help.

• Prinsep worked in a Company mint. Mackenzie's survey and Cunningham's work were state projects.
• But Brahmi was read by working backwards from Bengali and Devanagari, with Indian pandits helping.

• This shows that knowledge was produced jointly, even under colonial rule. The point is useful in answers on colonial knowledge and the writing of Indian history.

• Epigraphy moved history from "who ruled" to "how society worked".

• Once the dynasty lists were fixed by the early 20th century, historians used votive inscriptions, which name weavers, potters, goldsmiths and women donors, to write social and economic history from below.
• The same kind of source answers two very different questions: political chronology and everyday social life.

Related concepts

• Inscription
• Prakrit
• Palaeography
• Votive inscriptions
• Aihole inscription
• Copper plate inscriptions
• Asiatic Society of Bengal
• James Prinsep
• Brahmi script
• Brahmi numerals

Read more

• Epigraphy: inscriptions and their decipherment