Sanskrit Inscriptions

[Guest guest]

I would like to know how old the oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions

(not books) are and how old are the oldest Tamil inscriptions. I also

want to know where they are located.

 

Thanks.

[Guest guest]

I believe the earliest extant inscriptions date back to the Asokan

era (circa 250 BCE) but they are in Brahmi script and not in

Devanagari, kaushal

 

INDOLOGY, shevaroys wrote:

> I would like to know how old the oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions

> (not books) are and how old are the oldest Tamil inscriptions. I

also

> want to know where they are located.

>

> Thanks.

[Guest guest]

The oldest inscriptions in India (other than those in Harappan

script) are in Prakrit. There are some pre-Ashoka Mauryan

inscriptions like the Sohgaura copper plate and the Mahasthan

inscription.

 

The language of the inscriptions gradually changed from Prakrit to

Sanskrit during 100BCE to 100 CE. The two languages are essentially

dialects of each other.

 

Earliest Tamil inscriptions are also in Brahmi script (modern Tamil

script resembles Brahmi more than any other modern script). Some are

dated to 3rd cent BCE.

 

Yashwant

 

 

 

INDOLOGY, "Kaushal" <kaushal42@n...> wrote:

> I believe the earliest extant inscriptions date back to the Asokan

> era (circa 250 BCE) but they are in Brahmi script and not in

> Devanagari, kaushal

>

> INDOLOGY, shevaroys wrote:

> > I would like to know how old the oldest known Sanskrit

inscriptions

> > (not books) are and how old are the oldest Tamil inscriptions. I

> also

> > want to know where they are located.

> >

> > Thanks.

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, shevaroys wrote:

>I would like to know how old the oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions (not

>books) are and how old are the oldest Tamil inscriptions. I also want to

>know where they are located.

 

The earliest Sanskrit inscriptions are from 150 A.D.

from the era of the king, Rudradaman.

Prof. Witzel said in the old Indology list to me that

"hundred or so years earlier" few Skt. inscriptions

have been found in Mathura sculptures, (S. Rhie Quintanilla,

Harvard PhD 1999).

 

The appearance of Sanskrit only in the 2nd century AD

has been used by Nirad Choudhuri to claim that

Bhagavad Gita derives from the Christian Bible!

Nirad Chaudhuri in his book on Hinduism: 'the Gita is written

in good classical Sanskrit, and epigraphic

evidence clearly shows that the Gita could not

have been written before the second century A.D.'

'The doctrines of God coming into the world in the form of a

man is the doctrines of Christ and these have influenced

the writer of the Bhagavad Gita.'

 

I'm sure Choudhuri is wrong in his dating. However, both

the Bible and Gita stem from ideas found in Iranian religion.

The idea of Messiah, evil is black while good = white (dualism),

etc. is taken in the Bh. Gita, Maitreya Bodhisattva and the last

chapter on Apocalypse in the Bible comes from Persia.

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind0103&L=indology&P=R16616

 

 

----------------------

 

Tamil inscriptions have been found in Tamil Nadu and

Sri Lanka from 2nd century BCE. What is interesting

is the 2nd century BCE coins with Tamil Brahmi inscriptions

from Southwest Ceylon, now an area where no Tamils

are found. Ref.: Iravatham Mahadevan's article on

Tamil Brahmi inscriptions from Sri Lanka, J. Inst. Asian

studies (Chennai).

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

 

 

 

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