Inscriptions: As A Source of History

Abstract

History is an attempt made by man through centuries to reconstruct, describe and interpret his own past while as Historiography is an area of study which emphasizes on the writing of history. Various sources are available which enable the historian to study and analyze the contemporary political and socio-economic conditions. Amongst these, inscriptions form an important component, especially when we study ancient and early medieval period. Inscriptions are considered most reliable source of ancient history as they are generally devoid of myths and narrate the facts. Although we have a huge number of literally sources, they are mostly religious in them a ties and suffer from chronological problem. Introduction : The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy and an inscription is anything written or engraved on something such as stone, wood, metal, ivory plagues, bronze statues, bricks, clay, shells pottery etc. Epigraphy includes deciphering the text of inscriptions and analyzing the information they contain. It also includes paleography that is the study of ancient writing. 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 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. The earliest inscription found were written in Prakrit in 3rd century B. C. However the tradition of writing inscriptions become popular with the coming of Ashoka-The great. 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 name of Ashoka occurs only in copies of Minor rock edict 1st found at 3 places of karnataka and one place at Madhya Pradesh while other inscriptions mention his tittle ‘DEVANAPIYA PIYADASI’. Devanpiya tittle may have used by earlier monarchs buy the title of PIYADASI meaning good looking was unique. Ashokan inscriptions have been found in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan. Found at 47 different places, their total number of versions is 182 including 2 edicts that are considered spurious. Composed in Prakrit, they are written in Brahmi script in most parts of India but in north-western part of Indian subcontinent they appear in Aramaic language and khroshti script. In Afghanistan they are found at six different places and are written in both Greek language and Aramaic script. 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.