Temple Inscriptions Research Articles

<i>Pāňcālī </i>— A Local Administrative Unit of Ancient Nepal (4<sup>th</sup> to 8<sup>th</sup> Century A.D.): An Inscriptional Overview

Licchavi kingdom was an ancient kingdom in Nepal, which existed in the Kathmandu Valley from approximately from ca. A.D. 300 to ca. 879. Centuries earlier at the start of the Buddhist era, a powerful republic known as Licchavi existed in what is today Bihar. It is to be mentioned here, some legendary sources from the Kathmandu Valley also describe the Kirātas as early rulers there, taken over from earlier Gopāls or Ᾱbhiras, both of whom may have been cow herding tribes. In the pre Lichhavi period a village administration existed in the valley of Nepal. In that village administration there were some local chief officials named <i>Brahmum, Shulham</i>, <i>Tepulam</i> who maintained law and orders of the villages. In the Ᾱdī- Nārāyaṇa temple Inscription of Nepal there are 18 functionaries in which <i>Brahmum, Shulham</i>, <i>Tepulam </i>are mentioned. These non sanskritic terms disappeared after sometime and replaced by sanskritic terms such as <i>svatalasvāmī</i> and later <i>dauvārika</i>, a post which endured permanently in Nepal village administration. In the period of Aṁśuvarmā we see a significant change occurred in the use of land and its administration by the ushering in of the <i>pāňcālīs. Pāňcālī</i> has been used in the sense of modern <i>Pāňcāyet.</i> In ancient Nepal <i>Pāňcālī</i> was a village administration and <i>Pāňcālīkā</i> is the member of the administrative body <i>Pāňcālī. </i>In this paper an attempt has been made to discuss about the meaning of the term <i>pāňcālī,</i> its characteristics, responsibilities and roles in Nepal administration.

Converting to Daoism in the Seventeenth Century: Investigating the Lived Religious Experience of Qing Bannermen from the Bilingual Temple Inscription “Stele of The Palace of Great Peace” (Taipinggong bei 太平宮碑) (1662)

Converting to Daoism in the Seventeenth Century: Investigating the Lived Religious Experience of Qing Bannermen from the Bilingual Temple Inscription “Stele of The Palace of Great Peace” (Taipinggong bei 太平宮碑) (1662)

First osteological evidence of severed hands in Ancient Egypt

For the first time, the severed right hands of 12 individuals have been analysed osteologically. The hands were deposited in three pits within a courtyard in front of the throne room of a 15th Dynasty (c.1640–1530 BC) Hyksos palace at Avaris/Tell el-Dab‘a in north-eastern Egypt. Although this kind of practice is known from tomb or temple inscriptions and reliefs from the New Kingdom onwards, this is the first time that physical evidence has been used to learn more about the procedure and the individuals whose hands were taken. Here, we show that the right hands belonged to at least 12 adults, 11 males, and possibly one female. It is unclear if the hands were taken from dead or living individuals. After removing any attached parts of the forearm, the hands were placed in the ground with wide-splayed fingers, mainly on their palmar sides. The osteological analysis not only supports the archaeological interpretation of this evidence but also adds more detail regarding trophy-taking practices in Ancient Egypt.

An Overview of Musical Instruments in Temple Inscriptions and Sculptures

Temple inscriptions and sculptures bear testimony to what the Tamil music tradition would have been like many years ago. Although music has not been given a special place in the history of inscriptions, many temples have images of musical instruments engraved in inscriptions and sculptures. During the reign of the king, the art of inscription and sculpture was developed. Music is an integral part of human life. Early man classified lands based on nature and associated music with divine worship. Temple inscriptions and sculptures record references to dance, song, musicians, and musical instruments. Inscriptions and sculptures are widely used to remind people of current events. There is an example for laymen and researchers to learn and understand the shapes of musical instruments. Texts such as Tamilar Music, Panchamarapu, and Tamilar Torkaruviyal give us references to many musical instruments. The shapes of the images can be seen in person in the inscriptions in the temple. Descriptions of music and musical instruments can be found in inscriptions and sculptures at Thillai Nataraja Temple in Chidambaram, Ekambaranathar Temple, Kailasanathar Temple in Kanchipuram, Mamallapuram Gangaikonda Cholapuram, Nellaiappar Temple in Tirunelveli, Tarasuram Temple in Kumbakonam, Kudavarik Temple in Tirumeyyam in Pudukottai District, Arunachaleswarar Temple in Tiruvannamalai, Thiruvattaru.

고려 현종 대 천안(天安) ‘봉선홍경사갈기(奉先弘慶寺碣記)’와 최충(崔冲)

In April of the 17th reigning year of King Hyeonjong(1026), Choi Chung engraved the Bongseon Honggyeongsa Temple Inscription and recorded the reason, purpose, and meaning of the construction of the temple. This was according to the order of King Hyeonjong. According to the contents of the inscription, the purpose of the establishment of the temple is as follows： First, based on the justification for the origin of King Anjong, the Chujon king, he put forward Huessa(喜捨) and Bokjeon(福田) based on ‘Jungdojihwaseong(中道之化城)’ in 『Pundarika Sutra』. Second, the temple was built near Seonghwan Station in Jiksan-hyeon, the main transportation route to Cheonan-bu so that it could provide people with facility for transportation and a religious life. Through this, it is said that the world reached an era of prosperity due to the virtues of King Hyeonjong, and Bongseon Honggyeongsa Temple and Gwangyeonhwawon were established through his Buddhist heart and compassion. Through the name of ‘inscription(碣記)’, Choe wanted to create a sentence as if Sīmǎ Qiān or Sīmǎ Xiàngrú did, and here he intended to contain the meaning as a carved stone that recorded the achievements of Qinshihuangdi’s journey through the world.

A Late Second Temple Inscription from a Cave Complex at “Abraham’s House,” Mount of Olives in Jerusalem: Preliminary Publication

A Late Second Temple Inscription from a Cave Complex at “Abraham’s House,” Mount of Olives in Jerusalem: Preliminary Publication

Political History and Functionaries of Vikramapandeswar Temple – A Study

Vikrama Pandeswara temple of Cholapuram is situated in ten kilometer surrounding of Rajapalayam town. This is one of the most important canonical temples built by the Pandya kings of 12th–13th centuries ruled from Madurai. This temple Vikrama Pandeswara was the creation of Pandya king Vikrama Pandya. The inscriptions of this temple are published in South Indian Inscriptions Volume XXVI from 509 to 530. These inscriptions possessed information about the temple in a number of items. It contains the political history of the temple, the villages and nadu’s, tax procedure, temple officials and the temple rituals. The available inscriptions of this place, the inscription No. 525 published in volume XXVI deserves our attention. Many village names are found in the inscriptions of Cholapuram temple. Some places like Anmar Nadu, Mudi Valangu Pandya Nallur, Uttama Chola Chaturvedimangalam, Veerapandiya Chaturvedimangalam can be known from the inscriptions of this temple. One can also know the temple administration system through the temple inscriptions. This article indicates a brief overview on functionaries of Vikrama Pandeswara temple.

Intimate Itinerancy: Sex, Work, and Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya's Brothel Economy, 1870s–1930s

This article examines the rise and destruction of Chinese women's intimate labor networks in colonial brothels across British Malaya in the early twentieth century. Drawing on police files, travel documents, petitions, temple inscriptions, and the League of Nations' trafficking reports, it situates women's cooperative economies within the global history of Chinese migration. It shows how migrant women's myriad roles in the brothel economy—as sex workers, seamstresses, servants, and coffeehouse owners—served as crucial linchpins that sustained the Chinese overseas community in colonial Southeast Asia. Chinese diaspora studies seldom include women who engaged in migratory prostitution in their purview, emphasizing instead the circulation of capital, merchants, and contract laborers during Asia's "mobility revolution" (1840s–1940s). Yet, these women's experiences of sexual commerce, serial migration, and alternative socialities complicate existing migration narratives by illuminating how gender shaped border-crossing experiences and livelihood opportunities in unexpected ways.

Mirroring the god: topic, images and word-order in the hieroglyphic Luwian inscription ALEPPO 6

The presentation provides a short introduction to the Aleppo Temple and the inscriptions discovered during its excavations -ALEPPO 4, 5, 6, 7- (or that are supposed to have come from the Storm-God Temple -BABYLON 1, 2, 3-).
 Then an analysis of BABYLON 1 and ALEPPO 6 is provided. Both the inscriptions deal with the topic of reciprocity and mutual favours between the king (or the ruler) and the god. This topic is well expected in temple inscriptions. However, in ALEPPO 6 inscription this topic seems to have been developed on three different levels:
 1) topic of the inscription;
 2) iconography of the god’s and king’s images;
 3) unusual word-order in the first clause of the text (name and titles).
 In my opinion there is a close connection between these three levels: in this case not only texts and images were meant to convey the same message, but even the linguistic level (word-order) is affected by the attempt of creating an integrated way of communication.

Milk Libations for Osiris

Nubian worshippers are first attested in the temple inscriptions of Philae in the early Roman period. Before this time only royalty and officials employed by the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt inscribed ...

Biographies of South Indian Temple Inscriptions

This paper is a preliminary investigation of South Indian temple inscriptions from the perspective of their production and of their physical character – as material objects and as documents produced for particular purposes, making history and having histories of their own. I explore this topic through several case studies of groups of inscriptions engraved on the walls of Hindu temples in Tamilnadu, at different points in medieval history, from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. I consider the oral, material and performative processes that resulted in the production of inscriptions and investigate their ‘afterlives’. This paper tries to make sense of the mixed functions and statuses of South Indian temple inscriptions – as both objects and texts, as authoritative yet often illegible or ephemeral, as highly local yet engaged with cosmopolitan (royal, professional, legal) and even transcendental realms – to explore the intersection of material culture and religious life.

REINTERPRETASI MANTRA DALAM INSKRIPSI PENDEK CANDI SANGGAR

The relation between archeology and philology studies is related to studies of relief and epigraphy. In the construction of the temple, it is usually followed by the carving of Javanese literary stories in the relief of temples in Java. During the period of Majapahit's political decline, there was an increase in the number of shrines in the mountains of Java. The end of Majapahit's power became an important time frame as a marker of the cultural transformations. This study will present a re-reading of inscriptions at Candi Sanggar, a temple located on the slopes of Mount Bromo. The approach used in this research is Philoarchaeology. An archaeological perspective on artifacts and manuscripts. This research attempts to treat, describe, and interpret as text that reflects the supporting culture. Previous research, short inscriptions of Candi Sanggar only places as letters and languages. It is certainly open to other readings, putting its inscription as an arrangement of numbers or symbols. A less comprehensive study would lead to misinterpretation. So this paper places Candi Sanggar's short inscriptions in interpretation by considering philological studies, mainly on Budamtexts. This papper considers the paleographic study by aligning the Sanggar Temple inscriptions with the Merapi-Merbabu collection texts. The results of this study revealed that the short inscriptions at Sanggar Temple could be compared to the rules of Sengkalan Dihyang. The conclusions of Candi Sanggar inscriptions are Sengkalan Dihyang which reads 75 (1,3), 55 (3,5), 67 (3,3), 57 (3,2). Keywords: Sanggar Temple, Bromo, Paleografi, Merapi Merbabu, Sakala Dihyang.

A Study of the Temple Inscriptions of Senjirimalai Mandaragiri Velayudhasamy Temple

A Study of the Temple Inscriptions of Senjirimalai Mandaragiri Velayudhasamy Temple

Evaluation of anticonvulsant activity of the ethanolic extracts from leaves of Excoecaria agallocha

Ethnopharmacological relevanceExcoecaria agallocha is popularly known as ‘Thillai’ plant in the tamil language of the South India. Its uses are mentioned on the temple inscription of the Chidambaram Temple, Chidambaram, India which dates back to 2nd Century CE. AimTo investigate the anticonvulsant activity of ethanolic extract of leaves mangrove plant Excoecaria agallocha. Material and methodsThe ethanolic leaf extract of Excoecaria agallocha (100, 200 and 40 mg/kg) was evaluated in Swiss albino mice and male wistar rats were used for the study. Two different study models were employed; Maximal electroshock and Lithium-Pilocarpine convulsion method. The ethanolic extract was also subjected to acute toxicity study and phytochemical evaluation. ResultsThe ethanolic extract of leaves of Excoecaria agallocha was found to be safe in toxicity studies when compared to the standard drugs. It has LD50 of 2.12 g/kg of oral dose and 3.12 mg/kg of intraperitoneal dose. This extract (100–400 mg/kg) produced a significant (P < 0.01) dose dependent delay in onset of seizures in the MES model on oral administration which is comparable to Phenytoin (20 mg/kg i. p). This extract (100–400 mg/kg) produced a significant (P < 0.01) dose dependent reduction in intensity of seizures in the Lithium-Pilocarpine epilepsy model which was comparable to the standard drug diazepam (10 mg/kg). ConclusionThe results obtained from this study and finding suggests for the use of Excoecaria agallocha for the management of convulsions and justifies its use in traditional medicine.

Jewels Set in Stone: Hindu Temple Recipes in Medieval Cōḻa Epigraphy

Scholarship abounds on contemporary Hindu food offerings, yet there is scant literature treating the history of food in Hinduism beyond topics of food restrictions, purity, and food as medicine. A virtually unexplored archive is Hindu temple epigraphy from the time that was perhaps the theological height of embodied temple ritual practices, i.e., the Cōḻa period (ninth-thirteenth centuries CE). The vast archive of South Indian temple inscriptions allows a surprising glimpse into lived Hinduism as it was enacted daily, monthly, and annually through food offerings cooked in temple kitchens and served to gods residing in those temples. Through analyzing thousands of Tamiḻ inscriptions from the tenth through the fourteenth centuries CE, I have gleaned information concerning two distinct material cultural facets. (1) The practice of writing these rare but remarkable recipes which themselves are culinary textual artifacts has allowed us to access (2) Hindu food offerings of the past, also complex, sensory historical artifacts. In exploring these medieval religious recipes for the first time, I aim to show: the importance that food preparation held for temple devotees, the theological reality of feeding the actual bodies of the gods held in these temples, and the originality of the Cōḻa inscriptional corpus in bringing about a novel culinary writing practice that would be adopted more extensively in the Vijayanagara period (fourteenth-seventeenth centuries CE). This study, a radical new attempt at using historical sources inscribed in stone, sheds new light on medieval Hindu devotees’ priorities of serving and feeding god. The examination of this under-explored archive can help us move our academic analysis of Hindu food offerings beyond the hitherto utilized lenses of economics, sociology, and anthropology. Further, it contributes to our understanding of medieval temple worship, early culinary studies, and the history of food in India.

FOLLOWING THE NON-MONEY TRAIL: RECONCILING SOME ANGKORIAN TEMPLE ACCOUNTS

Few Angkorian temple inscriptions contain data on revenues and scheduling of resources in a manner that is both comprehensive and coherent. As a result, the operations of Angkor’s temples and āśrama are not well understood. Yet it must have been important for foundations to keep records to ensure their sustainability, particularly of offerings to deities and maintenance of personnel, in some cases numbering into the thousands. This paper uses an accounting approach to shed some light on the modes of support for workers of religious establishments. Prime uncertainties addressed in the process are varying scales of weights and measures for rice, and volumetric relationships between different forms of rice. Working back from stated quantities of rice and paddy, at times unrealistically precise, we deduce that the auditors adopted a ratio of 2 when calculating the conversion of paddy to rice, rather than the 2.5 commonly used in contemporary Indian texts. We also reevaluate the frequencies of two religious festivals, saṅkrānta and tithiviśeṣana. The metabolic requirements of different age groups and sexes in rice-eating communities, together with the rations prescribed in some of Yaśovarman’s āśrama allow us to estimate that a liḥ of rice weighed between 800 g and 900 g and from this to infer the age range for boys who were studying in those āśrama. The implications of the profiting of some and the under-provisioning for other sanctuary personnel are considered in conjunction with the institution of fortnightly scheduling seen in some religious establishments.

The Significance of Pharaonic Royal Names in Graeco-Roman Temples

Some Pharaonic royal names could be attested in the Graeco-Roman temple inscriptions. The names of Khufu, Pepi I, Amenemhet I, and Tuthmosis III are found within the inscriptions of Dendera temple. The Ancient Egyptian royal names in Dendera refer to the buildings activities of those monarchs in the area, or a mention of some activities of the main festivals during the time of those kings. In Esna temple the name of Tuthmosis III is referred to, showing that the festival of Hathor is performed according to the way it was done during the time of this king. The Inscriptions of Edfu temple refer to two monarchs of the 12th dynasty, namely Amenemhet I and Senwsert I, who had special relation to the temple, and during their time the festivals of the temple were performed. The names of Darius I, Darius II, Nectanebo I, and Nectanebo II, were mentioned in the texts of Edfu temple, for they made donations to the temple during their time.

Communicating Civilization Through Rituals: Mount Tai Pilgrimages in Song China, 960-1279

This paper examines the imperialfeng封 andshan禪 ritual at Mount Tai in 1008 and its connection with popular pilgrimages among the Mount Tai cult. It aims to demonstrate how ritual can be used as a tool of the imperial state in communicating its political and cultural agenda.Placing the imperial pilgrimage within its historical context at the turn of the eleventh century, it can be understood as an effort to secure mass identification with the state and its authority. More importantly, it could be used to establish ownership of Chinese civilization by the Song dynasty (960-1279) in its competition with the Khitan, who had long adopted Chinese institutions and ideology. Various strategies were deployed by the throne to communicate the imperial symbolism of the mountain. The mountain, therefore, had become valuable symbolic capital. Through the composition of temple inscriptions, the literati were able to redefine the popular ritual practices of the Mount Tai cult and brought them into a hegemonic discourse on the mountain. This facilitated the construction of an imperial cultural identity accessible to all social groups and allowed an abstract concept of Chinese culture to be communicated through the fabric of society.

FromPraśastito Political Culture: The Nadia Raj and Malla Dynasty in Seventeenth-Century Bengal

This paper examines the values that informed the actions of two polities in seventeenth-century Bengal, the Nadia Raj and the Malla dynasty, through a close analysis of their temple inscriptions—a form of royal laudation orpraśasti. Focusing on this inscriptional record of each polity, the paper is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the language of the inscriptions in order to examine the ways in which each polity crafts a political language. The second section addresses how each set of inscriptional records speaks to each polity's political culture. Finally, the third section discusses questions of patronage and reception in order to draw connections in each polity between its public language and its public settings. The paper concludes with some thoughts on what it meant for a polity to speak publicly in seventeenth-century Bengal.

The Trivikrama Temple: A New Interpretation of Rāmagiri Evidence (3)

In this article I re-examine the Kevala Narasimha Temple Inscription of Ramtek and discuss some new conjectures and interpretations.These allow us to form a more precise idea of the original object of this Vakataka inscription. The results are applied to the material remains on the Ramagiri.The article shows that there is a perfect match between the opening verse of the inscription and the Trivikrama sculpture preserved in situ amidst the temple ruins to the north-east of the Narasimha temple. The article argues that the inscription found in the Kevala Narasimha Temple on the Ramagiri originally came from the Trivikrama Temple.