Corpus of Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi Inscriptions

The Corpus of Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi Inscriptions is divided into three parts, eight chapters, and three appendices. Part I deals with Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi records found in lower West Bengal. Part II deals with Kharosti-Brahmi and associated Kharosti records from other parts of the Indian subcontinent. Part III deals with relevant records in South-east Asia.

B.N. Mukherjee was Carmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture at the University of Calcutta. He was connected with several academic bodies and held responsible positions. He published several books and contributed extensively indifferent learned journals in India and abroad. He made a major breakthrough in palaeographical research by successfully deciphering the so-called shell script of ancient India. In 1992, he was conferred with Padmashri by the Government of India in recognition of his outstanding expertise in numismatics.

The Present Work, Corpus of Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi Inscriptions, has been prepared by the undersigned as a National Fellow in History. The Fellowship was awarded by the Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi for the years 2000-2002. I am grateful to the authorities of the Council.

I am indeed indebted to Mr Ashok Jain for his supporting nature and giving this arduous work in the form of a book, besides, I am obliged to Mr Arun Kander for the making of palaeographic charts and plates.

The corpus of Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi Inscriptions prepared by us is somewhat different in treatment from that generally followed in case of preparing a Corpus of Indian inscription. Therefore, the reasons for the difference should be explained in the very beginning of our Corpus.

In a Corpus of Indian inscriptions a long introduction, often divided into several sections, is followed by separate articles on inscriptions concerned (each including information and discussions on the epigraph in question, its reading and translation). For examples, we can refer to the volumes published in the series entitled Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum.

We have thought it prudent to divide our work into three parts, eight chapters, and three appendices.

The first part deals with the Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi records found in lower West Bengal, which in the period concerned (c. First - early fifth centuries AD) formed the major part of ancient Vanga, We have also tried in chap. I to solve the problems-controversies about the name, origin, and the period of use of Kharosti chap. II (the first chapter of the second part) describes the detection of the Eastern Kharosti script, its characteristics, discovery of a mixed script, consisting Kharosti and Brahmi letters (named by us as Kharosti- Brahmi)," classification of the inscriptions, etc. Chap. III deals with a group or groups of persons, hailing from the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent. These people introduced the Kharosti script in ancient Vanga and probably formulated the use of Kharosti-Brahmi, Corpus of Eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi inscriptions of lower West Bangal (in ancient Vanga) appears in the fourth chapter. As the inscriptions are very short in length, it has been considered unnecessary to treat each of them in a separate article. We have described, read and translated them in a tabular form, furnishing all pieces of necessary data. The history of ancient Vanga (from c. First century or little earlier period to c. Early fifth century AD) is reconstructed in Chapter V.

Chapter VI is concerned with the Kharosu-Brahmi inscriptions from other parts of the Indian subcontinent and "Associated" Kharosti epigraphs (found within the geographical limits of eastern India, whether bearing the characteristics of Eastern Kharosti or not). These "Associated" Kharosti epigaphs have been found in eastern India, which includes inter alia lower West Bengal, the main area of Eastern Kharosti. For these reasons we have taken these records as "Associated" Kharosti inscriptions.

We have tried to indicate the main area or sub-area of the provenance of an inscription by the number given to it. The inscriptions of lower West Bengal (in ancient Vanga), the main area of use of eastern Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi, are allotted ordinary serial numbers. But in cases of epigraphs from other parts of eastern India not only a separate serial order is followed, but also their provenances are alluded to in the numbers themselves. Thus, an inscription from Bihar is marked by the letter "B" appearing after its serial number. Abbreviated references to the main areas of discoveries are given while numbering the records from the north-west (NW) or from South-East Asia (SEA). Thus, we have numbers like "lNW, IT(SEA)," etc. Different orders of serial numbers are followed for different main areas.

Since the number of inscriptions from each main area or sub-area other than West Bengal is insignificant (especially in comparison, with the number of the West Bengal records), each of them is discussed in a short section (even though not in a separate article). However, if a site has yielded more than ten inscriptions, some earlier discoveries are noticed in short sections and the data about the rest are furnished in tabular forms. Moreover, an inscription from such a site has in its number a second figure inserted after the reference to the area or sub-area. This has been in order to record the total number of epigraphs found there. Thus while an inscription from Bihar is numbered "2B," an epigraph from the site of Chunar (where numerous records have been unearthed) is indicated by the number "7U.P.5."

Part III deals mainly with the Kharosti and Kharosti-Brahmi inscriptions discovered in South-East Asia (chap. VIII). An epilogue is given in the last (after chap. VIII). Three important topics related to our subjects are discussed in three appendices.