1

The Scope and Significance of Epigraphy

in Indological Studies

Though it has been frequently stated, the importance of epigraphy in Indology can
hardly be overemphasized. The primary reason for the particular importance of epig-
raphy in the study of traditional India (as compared, e.g., with that of classical Europe
or China) is the extreme paucity, especially in the ancient period, of the type of his-
torical data from literary sources which is available for other major civilizations of
the ancient and medieval world. This situation is a reflection of what might be called
the "ahistorical" orientation of traditional Indian culture. Traditional India, with its
strongly idealistic and theoretical orientation, had little interest in what we in the
modern world think of as "history," and except for a few outstanding exceptions
Sanskrit and classical literature include little in the way of "historical" texts in the
stricter sense of the term. As a result, the history of ancient and early medieval (i.e.,
pre-Islamic) India must for the most part be reconstructed from incidental sources;
that is, sources whose original intent was something other than the recording of his-
torical events as such. Such sources include many branches of literature, both secu-
lar and religious, but these typically give us little more than tantalizing tidbits of
historical information, often distorted, and out of context at that. Far more revealing
are the archaeological sources, including not only the results of formal stratigraphic
excavations but also numismatic and above all epigraphic materials.
It has been authoritatively estimated1 that something like 80 percent of our
knowledge of the history of India before about A.D. 1000 is derived from inscrip-
tional sources.2 Without inscriptions, for example, we would have only the vagu-
est notion of the history of the Gupta dynasty, the greatest northern Indian empire
of the classical period. But the importance of epigraphy goes beyond historical
studies in the narrower sense of the term, that is, political history. The modern study
of most aspects of the cultural history of traditional India, such as the arts, litera-
ture, religion, and language, are also heavily indebted to inscriptions for their basic
chronological and geographical framework. Again reflecting the non-historical

1. D. C. Sircar, EINES 91.

2. For further details, see section 7.1.

3
4 Indian Epigraphy
orientation of traditional Indian culture as a whole, traditional literary and cultural rel-
ics typically seem to exist in a chronological vacuum; for example, the date of original
composition of literary texts, especially in the earlier centuries, is rarely recorded in
the works themselves (although later manuscript copies are often dated). Thus the dates
and even the relative chronologies of major cultural developments are often uncertain
or totally unknown. But here again inscriptional material, with its vast volume and di-
versity of contents, frequently comes to the rescue. In the history of literature, for ex-
ample, inscriptional allusions to and imitations of great classical poets, as well as original
compositions preserved in epigraphic form, provide a bedrock of evidence for the chro-
nological development of Sanskrit poetic literature.3 The same holds true, to a greater
or lesser extent, for nearly all branches of Indology ;4 in the words of D. C. Sircar, "there
is no aspect of the life, culture and activities of the Indians that is not reflected in in-
scriptions."5 Thus epigraphic materials, directly or indirectly, provide almost the only
solid chronological foundation for modern historically oriented studies. This is true
primarily because inscriptions, unlike literary sources, which almost always come to
us only after being copied and recopied through the centuries, are inherently datable,
either by an explicit date or by paleographic estimate.6 A reference to a particular legal
principle, religious sect, philosopher, poet, and so on, in an inscription thus gives at
least an approximate terminus ante quern for a person or event whose date might other-
wise (i.e., from literary sources alone) be impossible to determine even in the broadest
estimate.
It is mainly for these reasons that epigraphy is a primary rather than a secondary
subfield within Indology. Whereas in classical studies or Sinology, for example,
epigraphy serves mainly as a corroborative and supplementary source to historical
studies based mainly on textual sources, in India the situation is precisely the oppo-
site. There, history is built upon a skeleton reconstructed principally from inscrip-
tions, while literary and other sources usually serve only to add some scraps of flesh
here and there to the bare bones. There are, of course, some exceptions to the rule,
most notably in Kashmir, where unlike nearly everywhere else in India a sophisti-
cated tradition of historical writing flourished, best exemplified by Kalhana's
Rajatarahgim. Nonetheless, the general pattern remains essentially valid for politi-
cal, and to a lesser extent for cultural, history.7
The paucity of historical materials in the usual sense for India is balanced, as it
were, by the relative abundance of inscriptions.8 According to Sircar, "About 90,000

3. For further discussion, see section 7.2.

4. For examples and details, see sections 7.3-7.
5. EINES 102.
6. See section 5.4.
7. In this respect, the study of the history of traditional India is methodologically more compa-
rable to the study of the early urbanized cultures such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, for which
the principal sources are epigraphic rather than literary, rather than to that of the contemporary classi-
cal cultures of Europe and the Near and Far East.
8. The abundance of inscriptions in India may be attributed, in part at least, to the desire of the
issuing authorities to preserve their records in a form which would survive the rigors of the Indian cli-
mate, where documents on perishable materials such as palm leaves or paper tend not to last more than
a few generations. In particular, the widespread practice of recording land grants and other transac-
tions on copper plates seems to reflect such concerns (see section 4.1.2).
 The Scope and Significance of Epigraphy in Indological Studies 5

inscriptions have so far been discovered in different parts of India."9 These estimated
90,000 inscriptions come from virtually every corner of India and from every cen-
tury from the third (or possibly fourth) century B.C. up to modern times, though their
distribution is by no means equal in terms of antiquity and geographical and linguis-
tic distribution. For example, early inscriptions, that is, those from before about the
beginning of the Christian era are relatively rare, and inscriptions only become very
common in medieval times, from about the eighth century onward. In general, the
bulk of inscriptions in the later period are from southern India and the majority of
these are in Dravidian languages.10
Sircar's estimate of 90,000 inscriptions from India presumably does not include
inscriptions in the neighboring South Asian countries of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh,
and Sri Lanka, which would add many thousands more to the total. Inscriptions in In-
dian languages, moreover, are also found in large numbers over a vast area of Asia and
even beyond Asia, for instance, in Africa.'' The comments made earlier about the prime
importance of Indian inscriptions apply equally to these extra-Indian inscriptions, many
of which constitute our principal, sometimes even our sole, source for the historical
study of the Indianized civilizations of ancient Southeast and central Asia.
The number of known inscriptions, moreover, is constantly growing as new
records, including many of considerable importance, continue to be discovered within
and outside of India every year.12 A complete history of India written today, taking
into account all recent epigraphic discoveries, would be significantly different from
and more complete than one written, for example, only twenty years ago; there is no
reason to think that this pattern should change in the foreseeable future. Moreover,
as also noted by Sircar,13 a great many of the estimated 90,000 inscriptions already
found in India have not yet been published. While it is true that many of the still un-
published records are either of minimal importance or too badly damaged to be deci-
phered, no doubt some of them will, when they are finally published, add significantly
to our historical and cultural knowledge. Sircar thus decries the incorrect notion "that
all important inscriptions have already been discovered and utilized in the reconstruc-
tion of the lost history of ancient India and that there is little else to do."14 Epigraphy is
indeed still a living and developing field, even if it has in recent years suffered some-
thing of a decline in standards in India15 and a general neglect elsewhere.16
The decline of Indian epigraphic studies may be attributed, in part at least, to the
special difficulties and problems involved in this field.17 Not only is the material vast,

9. EINES 91. It has recently been estimated that some 58,000 Indian inscriptions have been pub-
lished (R. Garbini, JESI 19, 1993, 64).
10. According to Sircar (EINES 91), "the largest numbers come from the Tamil- Kannada- and
Telugu-speaking areas—about 35,000, 17,000, and 10,000 respectively."
11. On Indian-language inscriptions from outside of South Asia, see section 4.3.7.
12. Cf. EINES 91 and SIE 13.
13. EINES 91.
14. EINES 109; cf. also 91.
15. See EINES 91-2.
16. Cf. SIE 13 n. 1: "The study of Indian inscriptions . . . is no longer popular among European
scholars." But see also section 6.5.
17. EINES 92.
6 Indian Epigraphy
voluminous, and inherently difficult; it also requires a command of a range of lan-
guages, dialects, and script forms far greater than that needed for epigraphic studies
in most other parts of the world. The inscriptions include materials in virtually all
the major languages of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian families and also involve sev-
eral non-Indian languages of Southeast Asia and other regions. The variety of scripts
is enormous, these being subject to the same pattern of extensive local and chrono-
logical variation as are Indian languages and dialects. Indian epigraphy is thus a
subject of vast complexity which requires many years of study, but its inherent im-
portance and the rewards to be gained from it more than justify the effort.