Introduction

As we know, the study of inscriptions is known as Epigraphy and the study of the old writing
used in inscriptions and other old records is called Palaeography. Sir Alexander Cunningham is
known to be the father of epigraphy. We are going to discuss only about epigraphy throughout
this project. Epigraphy includes deciphering the text of inscriptions and analyzing the
information they contain. Inscriptions are major sources of knowledge of ancient Indian history.
The huge corpus of epigraphic literature found from different parts of the Indian subcontinent
forms a major source for understanding various aspects of early Indian society, religion,
economy and culture, besides dynastic and political history. In the context of Indian history, the
oldest records have been received from the Maurya ruler Ashoka. Through these inscriptions, we
get accurate information about the then society and culture.1

Types of Inscriptions
An inscription is any writing that is engraved on something- stone, wood, metal, ivory plaques,
bronze statues, bricks, clay, shells, pottery, etc. Inscriptions can be classified according to their
content and purpose into types such as donative, dedicative, and commemorative inscriptions.

Commemorative Inscription- The Lumbini pillar inscription of Ashoka is a royal

commemorative inscription recording a specific event- the visit of the king to the Buddha’s birth-
place. Stones were set up in honor of Jaina men and women who gave up their lives in the
exemplary Jaina fashion of death by starvation. In many parts of India, there is evidence of an
ancient practice of erecting memorials to dead people. The most common memorial stones were
erected in memory of dead heroes or women who committed sati. On the Konkan coast, many
stones were erected in memory of sailors who lost their lives in battles. Some memorial stones
were worshipped.

Donative inscriptions- Donative inscriptions in favor of religious establishments were inscribed

on shrine walls, railings and gateways. The excavation and donation of caves to ascetics were
recorded in inscription in the caves. These inscriptions include records of the installation of
religious images, often inscribed on the images themselves. Others record investments of money
made by people out of the interest of which lamps, flowers, incense, etc. were to be provided for
the worship of the deity. Examples of donative records are the royal land grants made by the
kings to the Brahmanas and religious establishments. There are thousands of such inscriptions,
some on stone and majority on copperplates. The earliest stone inscriptions recording land grants
with tax exemptions are Satavahanas and Kshatrapa epigraphs found at Nashik.

Dedicative records- The royal inscriptions which include prashastis (panegyric), are examples
of dedicative records. Most royal inscriptions (and some private ones too) usually begin with a
prashasti, but inscriptions are entirely devoted to eulogizing their subject. Their prashastis give
details about the history of dynasties and the reigns of kings. For example, the Allahabad
inscriptions of the 4th century Gupta emperor Samudragupta. There are some disadvantages of

1
https://www.sahapedia.org/literary-inscriptions-overview/ accessed from Sahapedia
using prashastis as sources of historical reconstruction as they sometimes exaggerate the
achievements of ruling king or mention the same activities of two different kings or sometimes
even skip their names.2

Other types of inscriptions- Inscriptions can also be classified based on the type of material on
which they are engraved, language, age, and geographical region. In ancient India, inscriptions
were carved on seals, stone pillars, rocks, copperplates, temple walls, wooden tablets, and bricks
or images. They can be classified into official records (for example, Ashoka’s edicts and royal
land grants) and private records (for example, Buddhist or Jaina establishments), depending upon
whose behalf they were inscribed.3

The language and script of different types of inscriptions and their importance- Like any
other archaeological sources, inscriptions are preserved in various museums of the country, but
the largest number may be found in the office of the chief epigraphist at Mysore. The earliest
inscriptions were written in Prakrit in the third century BC. Sanskrit was adopted as an
epigraphic medium in the second century AD and its use became widespread in the fourth and
fifth centuries, but even then Prakrit continued to be used. Inscriptions began to be composed in
regional languages in the ninth and tenth centuries. Most inscriptions bearing on the history of
the Maurya, post-Maurya, and Gupta periods have been published in a series of collections called
Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum. But not many inscriptions of the post-Gupta period figure in
such systematic compilations.

The Harappan inscriptions, which await decipherment, seem to have been written in a
pictographic script in which ideas and objects were expressed in the form of pictures. For Indian
history, the earliest deciphered inscriptions are Iranian. They belong to sixth-fifth centuries BC
and are found in Iran. They appear in Old-Indo-Iranian and also in Semitic languages in the
cuneiform script. They speak of the Iranian conquest of the Hindu or Sindhu area. Of course, in
India the earliest deciphered are Ashokan inscriptions. Most Ashokan inscriptions were engraved
in the Brahmi script, which was written from left to right, but some were also inscribed in the
Kharoshthi script which was written from right to left. However, the Brahmi script prevailed all
over India except for the north-western part. Greek and Aramaic scripts were employed in
writing Ashokan inscriptions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but Brahmi continued to be the main
script till the end of the Gupta times.4

The first literary reference to writing and written documents occur in Buddhist Pali texts,
especially the jatakas and Vinayapitaka. The Brahmi of Ashokan inscriptions seems a fairly
developed script and must have had a prior history of at least a few centuries. Recently important
direct evidence that Brahmi existed in pre-Mauryan times has come from Anuradhapura in Sri
Lanka, where excavations unearthed potsherds with short inscriptions (probably names of
2
Upinder Singh, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: from The Stone Age to The 12th century,
Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd, 2009, Twentieth Impression, pp. 47-49

3
Ibid. p 47
4
R.S. Sharma, India’s Ancient Past,
Oxford University Press, 2005, 41st impression, 2021, pp. 18-19
people) that can be dated to at least the early 4th century B. C. The ancient practice of inscribing
cave walls or stone monuments to commemorate conquests, religion ceremonies and other
important events existed in many parts of Asia.

However, the tradition of writing inscriptions become popular with the coming of Ashoka-The
great.5

Ashokan inscriptions: Ashokan inscriptions which are 39 in number and are classified into
major, minor and separate rock edicts, major and minor pillar edicts, provide a detailed
information about the Ashokan period. The Ashokan pillars were mostly inscribed in Prakrit
language and were written in Brahmi script. The name of Ashoka occurs only in copies of Minor
rock edict first found at three places of Karnataka and one place at Madhya Pradesh while other
inscriptions mention his title ‘DEVANAPIYA PIYADASI’. ‘'Devanapiya’' title may have been
used by earlier monarchs but the title of ‘Piyadasi’ meaning good looking was unique.6

An estimated 100,000 inscriptions have now been found, and many of these have been cataloged
and translated. The Edicts of Ashoka, a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka
(272 to 231 B.C.E.), as well as boulders and cave walls, are the earliest written materials on the
Indian subcontinent and represent the first tangible evidence of Buddhism.

Ashokan inscriptions have been found in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan. Ashokan
inscriptions throw a light on his career, his external and internal policies as well as his extent of
empire. He used his inscriptions as a medium of communication and used to deliver a direct
message to his people through his inscriptions. The main focus of his inscriptions was to spread
the principles of Dhamma.

Some limitations of Epigraphy:

 Sometimes the words engraved are very faint hence it is very hard to decipher them.
 Sometimes the inscriptions are damaged. Many words are lost due to their damaged
hence we are not able to get the proper meaning.
 Lastly, it is not always easy to find out the real meaning of the inscription.7

Conclusion

5
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3509854 accessed from SSRN

6
Ibid. accessed from SSRN
7
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Indian_inscriptions accessed from New World
Encyclopedia
Epigraphy is a very important segment of the archaeological sources in the reconstruction of
Indian history irrespective of some limitations. These inscriptions provide vital historical
evidence of the presence and actions of early monarchs and empires, revealing the extent of their
kingdoms and providing dates for specific events. They also provide complete genealogies as
well as documentation of religious customs, political structure, and legal systems. Inscriptions
are the earliest written forms of Indian languages and show that these written forms were well-
developed at the time the inscriptions were constructed. More than 55% of the epigraphical
inscriptions discovered in India by the Archaeological Survey of India are in Tamil. Many of the
inscriptions are written in lavish language, but when combined with material from other sources
such as oral traditions and extant monuments or ruins, inscriptions give insight into India's
dynastic past that would otherwise be lacking in contemporaneous historical records.
Abstract
Epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. Normally, history
and epigraphy are practiced by a similar individual. Ancient writings have their own unique
meaning. Hence, to study the past, we need to know what these writings involve. The procedure
of studying, analyzing, and determining ancient graphemes is referred to as epigraphy. In this
project, I have discussed the different types of inscriptions, each of which have their own
importance. The epigraphers compare the writings on inscriptions with known languages and use
the known language as a standard. There are inscriptions which are written in languages that are
still studied today such as Pali, Sanskrit etc. and so it’s a matter of learning that language.
Sometimes the older languages evolve into other forms and thus they serve as references. I have
researched on the scripts and languages used in inscriptions and also stated their importance with
examples. There are some limitations too in the study of epigraphy which I have listed down. I
have given an overview on how the inscriptions are actually important in the reconstruction of
ancient history in conclusion. In all, epigraphs serve to give readers some idea of the themes and
subjects that appears later in work, while also establishing context for a story.
Critically discuss the importance of Epigraphy as a source for the
reconstruction of Ancient Indian History.

NAME: Payel Roy

SUB.: HISA CC-1

DEPARTMENT: History

REGISTRATION NO.: 032-1211-0089-22

ROLL NO.: 222032-11-0074

SEMESTER: 1

YEAR: 2022-2025
Bibliography

Books-

Singh, Upinder, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: from The Stone Age to The 12 th
century,
Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd, 2009, Twentieth Impression.

Sharma, R.S., India’s Ancient Past,

Oxford University Press, 2005.

Article-

Literary Inscriptions: An Overview

https://www.sahapedia.org/literary-inscriptions-overview/ accessed on 28/12/2022

Inscriptions: As A Source of History

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3509854 accessed on 28/12/2022

Indian Inscriptions
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Indian_inscriptions accessed on 28/12/2022