Zoomed Vinay Special · First-person editorial
A 2,000-Year-Old Stone in Odisha Is Said to Hold the Oldest "Bharat." Its Tenth Line Is Broken, and Its Editors Disagree on What It Says
Seventeen lines of Prakrit cut above a cave on Udayagiri hill tell the story of Kharavela, king of Kalinga, year by year. I opened the major editions, from the 1929–30 Epigraphia Indica to Sircar and Shashi Kant, and set their readings of line 10 side by side, then read the Vishnu Purana's Bharata and the Constituent Assembly's debate of 18 September 1949 on "India, that is, Bharat." What the stone proves, what it might say, and what it cannot carry.
The point of view
Let me take you to a cave on a small hill outside Bhubaneswar, in November 1919. Two scholars are lying half on their backs, reading letters cut into the rock above their faces. One of the words they are hunting for is "Bharadhavasa." Many people today call it the oldest inscribed "Bharat" in the country. But that word, if it is there at all, sits in the most damaged part of one of the most argued-over inscriptions in India. One great epigraphist wrote that the record of that year "cannot be made out." So I opened every edition I could find. What does line 10 actually say? And who is reading what into it?
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Source Library
K.P. Jayaswal and R.D. Banerji, "The Hathigumpha Inscription of Kharavela," Epigraphia Indica XX (1929–30; Delhi: Manager of Publications, 1933), No. 7, pp. 71–89 (used: pp.…
archive.org
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B.M. Barua, Old Brāhmī Inscriptions in the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1929), pp. 20, 44
archive.org
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D.C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions Bearing on Indian History and Civilization, vol. I (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1942), No. 91, pp. 206–212
archive.org
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D.C. Sircar, Select Inscriptions, vol. I, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1965), pp. 213–221 (used: pp. 215 n. 7, 216)
archive.org
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Shashi Kant, The Hāthīgumphā Inscription of Khāravela and the Bhabru Edict of Aśoka: A Critical Study (Delhi: Prints India, 1971), foreword by A.L. Basham; pp. 4–5, 15, 25,…
archive.org
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Viṣṇu Purāṇa 2.3.1, Sanskrit text, Bombay: Venkatesvara Steam Press, 1910, GRETIL e-text
gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de
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H.H. Wilson (trans.), ed. Fitzedward Hall, The Vishnu Purána, vol. II (London: Trübner & Co., 1865), Book II, ch. III, p. 127
archive.org
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Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. IX, Sunday 18 September 1949, pp. 1675–1693 (Lok Sabha Secretariat; eparlib handle 123456789/763313), read from the archive.org mirror of…
Lok Sabha Secretariat
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Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice, Legislative Department, The Constitution of India [as on 1 May 2024], Part I, Article 1, p. 2
cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in
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Archaeological Survey of India, Centrally Protected Monuments/Sites: State-wise and Circle-wise, Odisha, Bhubaneswar Circle, Sl
asi.nic.in
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Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Documentation format for Archaeological/Heritage Sites/Monuments, "Hatigumpha Cave, Udayagiri hillock," Serial No. OR/KDA/BSR-186
ignca.gov.in
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