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Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Learn to read inscriptions

Words cut in stone or engraved on copper, inscriptions, are among the chief sources for the early history of the Telugu country.1 They record gifts to temples and monasteries, the family trees and wars of kings, the duties paid by sea traders and much else, and many of them give their own date. They can be read by anyone willing to learn a few dozen letter-shapes and a handful of rules. This short course shows you how.

Why inscriptions matter here

The history of the region is written in its inscriptions. In 1908 the Imperial Gazetteer described the Madras Government Epigraphist as “systematically translating and publishing the countless inscriptions on the thousands of temples in the Presidency”, work that was “doing much to illuminate the existing darkness of its early history”.1 Single districts hold hundreds: in 1905 Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty published about 903 inscriptions on copper plates and stones from Nellore district alone.2 For the Telugu-Kannada script on its own, G. H. Ojha wrote in 1918 that the inscriptions and copper plates of the many dynasties that used it numbered not in hundreds but in thousands.3

They are also written in many scripts and languages. One volume of South-Indian Inscriptions (1928), covering records copied in 1897–99, contains 1,215 inscriptions: 241 in Tamil, 744 in Telugu, 113 in Kanarese, 36 in Oriya and 81 in Nagari and “cave characters”. Of these, 525 come from the temple at Simhachalam alone.4 Add Prakrit in Brahmi from the Buddhist age, and Persian and Arabic from Golconda and Hyderabad, and you have the range this course covers.

How to use this course

Each lesson is short and self-contained. It explains one topic in plain language, walks you through a real example from an inscription on this site, and ends with a Try it yourself exercise. The answer is hidden until you click. Every statement is footnoted to a page of a published source, so you can always check what the experts actually said. The sources disagree more often than you might think. The first published reading of the Hanamkonda inscription, for instance, put its date at Saka 1054, a second scholar read Saka 1064, and only J. F. Fleet’s edition of 1882 established Saka 1084.5 Where the sources disagree, the lesson tells you.

You do not need to know Sanskrit, Prakrit or Persian to begin. If you can read some Telugu, you will find the later inscriptions familiar: G. H. Ojha found that by about the 14th century most letters of the Telugu-Kannada script looked like those of modern Telugu and Kannada.3 If you cannot, start with the lesson on letters and vowel signs.

The learning path

1. Getting started

  • How an inscription is built: the parts nearly every inscription has, from the opening blessing to the closing curse, shown on the Motupalli pillar, the Nandamapundi copper plates and a Nagarjunakonda pillar.6
  • What inscriptions were written on: rock, pillars, temple walls, copper plates with rings and seals, caskets and palm leaves, and how scholars make the ink impressions you see in books.

2. Reading skills

3. The scripts

4. Dates

Practise on your own

Once you have worked through a few lessons, try reading an inscription by yourself:

  1. Choose an inscription from the inscriptions section that has a plate in the gallery, for example the Hanamkonda inscription, the Bhattiprolu caskets or the Kodavali rock inscription.
  2. Find the edition. Each inscription page cites the published edition, with a link to its pages on archive.org. Editions usually print the text line by line with line numbers, followed by a translation, as Fleet’s edition of the Hanamkonda inscription does.7
  3. Read one line at a time. Pick a line in the plate, find the same line number in the edition, and match the printed syllables to the shapes. Begin with names and numbers; they are the easiest to spot.
  4. Compare the dates. Check the date in the edition against the rules in Reading dates.

Remember that dates are rarely as simple as they look. A. C. Burnell warned that the “formidable number of eras and complicated calendars” might seem to promise an exact chronology, “but such hopes are entirely delusive”.10

Further reading

All the books below are in the public domain and free to read on archive.org. They are the main sources of these lessons.

  • A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D., being an Introduction to the Study of South-Indian Inscriptions and MSS., 2nd ed. (London: Trübner & Co., 1878). Alphabet tables of every southern script, with chapters on numerals, eras, writing materials and the form of grants. archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Johann Georg Bühler, Indian Paleography, edited by J. F. Fleet as an Appendix to the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXXIII (Bombay: Education Society’s Press, Byculla, 1904). The classic account of how the Indian scripts developed. archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala (The Palaeography of India), 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (Ajmer: the author, 1918). In Hindi, with many plates of letters and numerals, among them tables from Kakatiya, Eastern Chalukya and Pallava records of the Telugu country.11 archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Robert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit, The Indian Calendar, with Tables for the Conversion of Hindu and Muhammadan into A.D. Dates, and vice versa (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1896). The standard tables for converting dates. archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Charles Philip Brown, Cyclic Tables of Hindu and Mahomedan Chronology, regarding the History of the Telugu and Kannadi Countries (Madras: Christian Knowledge Society’s Press, Vepery, 1850; the archive.org scan is a 1994 facsimile). Year-by-year tables of the sixty-year cycle. archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Charles Philip Brown, Carnatic Chronology: The Hindu and Mahomedan Methods of Reckoning Time Explained (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1863). archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • A. H. Arden, A Progressive Grammar of the Telugu Language, with Copious Examples and Exercises (Madras: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Vepery, 1873). Clear tables of the modern Telugu letters, vowel signs and compound letters. archive.org (opens in a new tab)
  • Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam (London: W. H. Allen & Co.; New York: Scribner, Welford & Co., 1885). Useful for the Hijri calendar and abjad numbers. archive.org (opens in a new tab)

For the editions of individual inscriptions, see the inscription pages and the full list of sources.

Footnotes

  1. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (1908), pp. 23–24 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  2. Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates and Stones in the Nellore District, Part I (1905), Preface, pp. v, viii (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  3. Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala, 2nd ed. (1918), pp. 84–85 (in Hindi; paraphrased) (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  4. K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer (ed.), South-Indian Inscriptions (Texts), Vol. VI (1928), Preface (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. J. F. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII”, Indian Antiquary XI (1882), p. 9 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  6. E. Hultzsch, “Motupalli Pillar-Inscription of Ganapatideva”, Epigraphia Indica XII (1914), p. 188 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)); F. Kielhorn, “Nandamapundi Grant of Rajaraja I”, Epigraphia Indica IV (1897), p. 300 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  7. Fleet, “Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII” (1882), text, p. 12 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)), and translation, p. 16 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2

  8. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (1878), p. 14, table of the derivation of the South Indian alphabets (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  9. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography (1878), p. 71, “The eras” (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  10. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography, 2nd ed. (1878), p. 80 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  11. Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala (1918), Plates 13, 43, 48 and 50 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

References

Sources (14)
  1. Government of India, Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series: Madras, Vol. I (opens in a new tab), Superintendent of Government Printing, Calcutta, 1908, pp. 23–24. [Public domain]
  2. Gaurishankar Hirachand Ojha, Bharatiya Prachin Lipimala (The Palaeography of India), 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (opens in a new tab), The author, Ajmer, 1918, pp. 84–85. [Public domain]
  3. K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer (ed.), South-Indian Inscriptions (Texts), Vol. VI (opens in a new tab), Government of India, Central Publication Branch, Calcutta, 1928, Preface. [Public domain]
  4. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South-Indian Palaeography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D., being an Introduction to the Study of South-Indian Inscriptions and MSS. (2nd ed.) (opens in a new tab), Trübner & Co., London, 1878, Title page, 80. [Public domain]
  5. Alan Butterworth and V. Venugopaul Chetty, A Collection of the Inscriptions on Copper-Plates and Stones in the Nellore District, Part I (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1905, v–viii. [Public domain]
  6. J. F. Fleet, Sanskrit and Old-Canarese Inscriptions, No. CXVIII (Kakatya inscription of Rudradeva at Anamkond, Saka 1084), Indian Antiquary, Vol. XI (opens in a new tab), Indian Antiquary (ed. Jas. Burgess), Bombay, 1882, pp. 9. [Public domain]
  7. Johann Georg Bühler (ed. J. F. Fleet), Indian Paleography (edited as an Appendix to the Indian Antiquary, Vol. XXXIII, 1904) (opens in a new tab), Bombay Education Society's Press, Byculla, 1904, Title page. [Public domain]
  8. Robert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit (with Robert Schram), The Indian Calendar, with Tables for the Conversion of Hindu and Muhammadan into A.D. Dates, and vice versa (opens in a new tab), Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1896, Title page. [Public domain]
  9. Charles Philip Brown, Cyclic Tables of Hindu and Mahomedan Chronology, regarding the History of the Telugu and Kannadi Countries (opens in a new tab), Christian Knowledge Society's Press, Vepery, Madras, 1850, Title page. [Public domain]
  10. Charles Philip Brown, Carnatic Chronology: The Hindu and Mahomedan Methods of Reckoning Time Explained (opens in a new tab), Bernard Quaritch, London, 1863, Title page. [Public domain]
  11. A. H. Arden, A Progressive Grammar of the Telugu Language, with Copious Examples and Exercises (opens in a new tab), Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Vepery, Madras, 1873, Title page. [Public domain]
  12. Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam (opens in a new tab), W. H. Allen & Co., London; Scribner, Welford & Co., New York, 1885, Title page. [Public domain]
  13. F. Kielhorn (articles); E. Hultzsch (ed.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IV (1896–97) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1897. [Public domain]
  14. Sten Konow (ed.), Epigraphia Indica, Vol. XII (1913–14) (opens in a new tab), Archaeological Survey of India, 1914. [Public domain]