Talk:Early Indian epigraphy

Article split
Not sure what the article should be split into, as all the examples and references relate to India. The article itself stemmed from a need for links in several FA articles on the history and architecture of India. &mdash; Mattisse (Talk) 20:28, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The article used to be called "Indian inscriptions", which was a patently silly title. I can see an article on "early Indian epigraphy", although that's still a rather WP:SYN topic. I am not sure in what way you mean "all the examples and references relate to India". By this logic we might as soon move it to Eurasian epigraphy or Old World epigraphy. Actual encyclopedic topics in here are: But it's fair enough to keep this as a WP:SS overview. --dab (𒁳) 07:42, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Brahmi script
 * Early Tamil epigraphy
 * Early Telugu epigraphy
 * Ashoka inscriptions
 * Kadamba inscriptions
 * Indian copper plate inscriptions
 * Perhaps this one needs changing also? Indian copper plate inscriptions &mdash; Mattisse  (Talk) 18:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There are many inscriptions in Ancient Indian temples like Tirumala Venkateswara Temple. Where to enter this data.Dr. Rajasekhar A. 09:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Kanheri Caves Image
The writing on the Kanheri caves inscription is not Brāhmī but a later development - probably Gupta Script. mahaabaala (talk) 16:53, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Evidence of Late arrival of writing
Megasthenes' comment, viz.
 * Explicit statements by Megasthenes c. 300 BCE that Indians had no writing

was a reference to soldiers in camp and not to Indians in general. in any case, a very small percentage in any ancient population knew how to write. I have removed this point. If anyone wants to re-insert it kindly do so with explicit inline references.

Similarly, the reference to Panini's work making no sense in written form is a POV comment. All ancient sanskrit works were written to be memorized, whether they were to be put to paper or not. The fact that Panini's grammar is still used in written form says otherwise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Madmonk11 (talk • contribs) 03:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


 * The early Brahmi script evidence at Adichanalloor Says that the site is 1500 BCE to 500 BCE which is prior to Megasthenes reach in India. Dr. Satyamurthy, however, proposes that the script found inside the urn may belong to circa 5th century B.C. According to him, this was based on "preliminary thermo-luminescence dating," which "takes the site to the period from 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C. So the script is also likely to be dated to 5th century B.C. even if we take the latest date into consideration. So we can delete that Line. Haribabu.P 10:49, 24 September 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Servophbabu (talk • contribs)

This is beside the point. When Megasthenes says "India", he obviously means North India, i.e. the Indus river. He isn't talking about, nor does he have any concept of, the Indian subcontinent. If there had been writing in Tamil Nadu in the 4th century BC, Megasthenes could not have known about it, his statement still holds true for the area he knew as "India".

Of course there was oral "literature" for a thousand years before the introduction of writing. But this has nothing to do with this article's topic, which is explicitly about epigraphy, not about Sanskrit oral tradition.

Afaik, Ashoka's are still the earliest known inscriptions in North India. There may or may not have been epigraphy in Tamil Nadu 200 years before Ashoka, it seems that the jury is still out on that one, so we'll just have to report the possibility. --dab (𒁳) 12:39, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

General and specific
The Shankarpur copper-plate inscription was a specific article on a specific record of importance for north India during the 5th and 6th centuries. This article is a general one about Indian Epigraphy; it seems to serve no useful purpose moving this article here. I suggest moving it back as an independent article. --Shirazibustan (talk) 14:02, 21 May 2013 (UTC)shirazibustan

Early Tamil Writing
The dating of the south India potshards to pre-Asoka has now been discredited. Conningham has form with this sort of announcement. He also recently announced "the earliest Buddhist shrine" at Lumbini on extremely flimsy evidence that could not support such a conclusion. There was nothing at all to identify the finds as either a. a shrine, or b. Buddhist. Jayarava (talk) 22:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree, see Talk:Tamil-Brahmi. The pre-Ashokan theory is mainly pushed by fanatic Tamil nationalists whose goal is to win the equivalent of a dick-measuring contest against the hated North Indians, an intra-Indian propaganda war (make no mistake, I loathe their Hindutva religious fanatic enemies just the same, if not more); all those POV-warring assholes need to be ruthlessly and mercilessly blocked and the most vulnerable articles semi-protected – it's mainly the fault of these zealots that our coverage of Indological topics is particularly unreliable and full of crap: Wikipedia at its worst. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:35, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

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