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Paper documents and copper-plates: localization of hegemonic practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2015

Pushkar Sohoni
Pushkar Sohoni*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
*
sohoni@pobox.upenn.edu
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Abstract

This paper examines the social currency of copper-plate charters on the basis of Persian copper-plates from the Deccan. Indic religious systems have a long tradition of conferring land grants using this medium, partially rooted in beliefs of metaphysical qualities attributed to metals. The objects from this region are highly unusual because there are no other recorded instances of a sultan issuing or authorizing land grants on copper-plates. The Persian-language copper-plates appear from the sixteenth century onwards, and seem to be later copies of (or extracts from) paper-based charters issued by Bahmani sultans and other kingdoms in the Deccan. Issues of authenticity and forgeries, fakes and copies are also raised in this paper. This study examines objects that combine material culture and textual content. While the textual content of these objects has always been privileged as being a source of history, the medium – which itself has a history of reception – has not been given its own historical narrative. The paper provides new perspectives on what we might call the “social life” of different documentary formats in medieval and early modern India, in particular the copper-plate grant.

Keywords

Copper-platesChartersDeccanEarly modern IndiaForgeriesSultans
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 87 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2015 

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References

1 On the wealth of copper-plate charters and grants in India much has been published: many geographical, administrative and political divisions in South Asia have produced publications on their copper-plate charter, for example: Alan Butterworth and V Venugopaul Chetty, Copper-Plate and Stone Inscriptions of South India, vols 1–3 (Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1989); K.G. Krishnan, Karandai Tamil Sangam Plates of Rajendrachola I (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1984); K V Ramesh and S P Tewari, A Copper-Plate Hoard of the Gupta Period from Bagh, Madhya Pradesh (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1990); Bahadur Chand Chhabra, Diplomatic of Sanskrit Copper-Plate Grants (Delhi: National Archives of India, 1960), Sushil Chandra De, Descriptive Catalogue of the Copper-Plate Inscriptions of Orissa (Bhubaneswar, Supt., Research & Museum, 1961). Similar copper documents have also been found in South-East Asia, and even as far as the Philippines: Sarkar, Himanshu Bhushan, “Copper plates of Kembang Arum, 824 Saka”, Journal of the Greater India Society (JGIS), V/1, 1938, 31–50Google Scholar; Sarkar, Himanshu Bhushan, “Copper plate of Barabudur: 828 Saka”, JGIS VI/2, 1941, 124–30Google Scholar; Postma, Antoon, “The laguna copper-plate inscription: text and commentary”, Philippine Studies 40/2, 1992, 183–203Google Scholar; Albertine Gaur, Indian Charters on Copper Plates in the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (London: British Library, 1975), Ind. Ch. 57, p. 32.

2 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

3 The earliest widely known copper-plate grant is probably the find at Sohgaura, initially thought of as pre-Ashokan, but now dated by scholarly consensus to a post-Mauryan period; W. Hoey, Vincent A. Smith and A.F. Rudolf Hoernle, “Note on the Sohgaura copper plate”, in Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (May and June 1894), 84–8; J.F. Fleet, “The inscription on the Sohgaura plate”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Jul. 1907, 509–32. The oldest copper-plate charter in the British Library is from the third century ad, according to Albertine Gaur, Indian Charters on Copper Plates, Ind. Ch. 13, dated to 247/8 ad, p. 8; D.B. Diskalkar, Materials Used for Indian Epigraphical Records (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1979), 39, has mentioned two copper-plate charters from the first century of the Common Era, found in Taxila and Suivihara; another example of an early inscribed charter is the Taxila silver scroll, as described by Richard Salomon in Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 66: “Some early inscriptions, mostly Kharosti relic dedications on metal plates, are written with a series of dots (e.g. the Taxila silver scroll, CII 2.1, 70–7).”

4 Diskalkar, Materials Used, 40–2.

5 Hermann Kulke, “Some observations on the political functions of copper-plate grants in early medieval India”, in Bernhard Kölver and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner (eds), Recht, Staat und Verwaltung im klassischen Indien (Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1997), 239–40: “… it took nearly five centuries till new royal eulogies of the carita type were composed … So far it appears to have escaped the perception of scholars that the long royal praśastis of the copper-plate inscriptions, e.g. those extremely long eulogies of the Cholas and the Eastern Gangas of Orissa, correspond more or less exactly to the caritam literature. In a way, each copper-plate formed a new and up-dated edition of the dynastic history as they usually included the newest information about the ruling king and his court. These copper-plate inscriptions with their praśastis therefore formed one of the most important means (and certainly the most important written form) of legitimizing early medieval Indian kingship through genealogical claims.”

6 Salomon, Indian Epigraphy, 106.

7 See Epigraphia Indica v. XXVII, 9 ff. for the Tasgaon and Nandgaon plates issued by the Yadavas, and Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XX, 432–3 for the Kaseli plate of the Silaharas.

8 See P.K. Gode, “Migration of paper from China to India – a.d. 105–1500”, Studies in Indian Cultural History, vol. III (Poona: Prof. P.K. Gode Collected Works Publication Committee, BORI, 1969), 1–12.

9 B.R. Gopal (ed.), Vijayanagara Inscriptions, v. 1–3 (Mysore: Directorate of Archaeology and Museums), has a record of 92 Sangama (1336–1485), three Saluva (1485–1505), 62 Tuluva (1505–69) and 72 Aravidu (1569–1659) copper-plate charters. About 25 of these are confirmed or suspected of being forgeries or spurious. Two of these charters, numbered KN 230 and KN 231, are assigned dates as late as 1712 and 1713 ad respectively. It is possible that they are reconfirmations of older charters, or even “copies”.

10 Gaur, Indian Charters, p. xiv; for example, ibid., p. 24, dated to 1829.

11 For example, Julius Jolly (trans.), The Institutes of Vishnu [Vishnu Sutra] (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1977), 21, Vishnusutra III 82, “To those upon whom he has bestowed (land) he must give a document, destined for the information of a future ruler, which must be written upon a piece of (cotton) cloth, or a copper-plate, and must contain the names of his (three) immediate ancestors, a declaration of the extent of the land, and an imprecation against him who should appropriate the donation to himself, and should be signed with his own seal”.

12 Salomon, “The fine art of forgery”, 107–8, describes the status and understanding of copper-plate charters and forgeries in the dharmashastras, which must have been based on “practical considerations, not merely theoretical ones”.

13 Kulke, “Some observations”, 241: “It is much more likely that they [lists of officials] reflected very exactly the ‘official’ hierarchical order of court officials and those of lower grades at the provincial and local level. This hierarchy need not be exactly identical with the actual socio-political status of the dignitaries in their respective local environment”.

14 Daud Ali, “Royal eulogy as world history: rethinking copper plate inscriptions in Cola India”, in Ronald Inden, Jonathan Walters and Daud Ali, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 165–229.

15 The widespread use of paper in Islamicate kingdoms across Central Asia, Iran and South Asia is documented in Jonathan Bloom, Paper before Print: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001).

16 While copper-plate charters are positioned in a larger body of materials and practices, and their relationship to other documentary material forms, such as seals, coins, etc. is worthy of discussion, that treatment is difficult in this paper owing to lack of space.

17 Kulke, “Some observations”, p. 240.

18 Salomon, “The fine art of forgery”, 111.

19 Salomon, “The fine art of forgery”, 107, n. 1.

20 Salomon, “The fine art of forgery”, 111.

21 Gopal, Vijayanagara Inscriptions.

22 D.V. Potdar and G.N. Muzumdar (eds), Sivacaritra Sahitya, v. 2 (Poona: Bharata Itihasa Samshodhak Mandal, 1930), BISM Sviya Granthamala no. 33, p. 240.

23 A large feature article with illustrations was published by Baban Thakkar, “Kartavyakaṭhōr Dayāsāgar” in the Marathi newspaper Sakal, Pune edition, 15 January 1995, Sunday Supplement no. 2, p. 4.

24 In fact, even the Marathas had a very limited memory of Vijayanagara, as shown by Guha, Sumit in “The frontiers of memory: what the Marathas remembered of Vijayanagara”, Modern Asian Studies 43/1, 2009, 269–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 There are other known copper-plates of this nature, and it would not be surprising if a few further such discoveries are made in the future. See Rao Bahadur Ganesh Chimnaji Vad, Purushottam Vishram Mawjee and D.B. Parasnis (eds), Selections from the Government Records in the Alienation Office Poona, Sanads & Letters (Bombay: Published with the Permission of the Government of Bombay by Purushottam Vishram Mawjee, 1913), part 2.1, pp. 7–8. This copper-plate charter is in Marathi, and is in a very local language without the writing styles employed in royal farmāns.

26 For samples of the widespread practices of grants and decrees issued in standardized formats on paper from the Deccan, see Yusuf Husain Khan, Farmans and Sanads of the Deccan Sultans (1408–1687 ad) (Hyderabad: State Archives, Government of Andhra Pradesh, 1980).

27 G. Bühler, “XI – The Madhuban copper-plate of Harsha dated Samvat 25”, Epigraphia Indica vol. I (Calcutta: Superintendent of Govt Printing, India, 1892), p. 74: “Be it known to you that, having considered that this village of Somakundika has been enjoyed by the Brahman Vamarathya on the strength of a forged edict, having therefore broken that edict and having taken (the village) from him, I have granted it, up to its boundaries, together with the udranga …”.

28 T. Bloch, “A forged copper-plate inscription from eastern Bengal”, in ASI Annual Report 1907–08 (Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, India, 1911), pp. 255–9, Plate LXXXII.

29 Bühler, “XI – The Madhuban copper-plate”, p. 67, “[The copper-plate inscription] shows a number of more archaic forms … epigraphic alphabets are in many details retrograde and lag behind the literary ones”.

30 As noted by Khan (Farmans and Sanads, pp. v–vi), “… the sultans issued farmans to any one on one's representation. But when found, on another person's [sic] representation, that the orders were contrary to the facts, they withdrew the orders and issued another farman, stating that if any one produced any other farman contrary to the one now issued, [it] should not be considered as valid”.

31 Gopal, Vijayanagara Inscriptions, v. 2, KN 530 is an example of a copy of a copper-plate charter made on a palm leaf.

32 Here, the copper-plates have been given the arbitrary nomenclature of letters A to E, to avoid calling the objects after toponyms of findspot or present location (such as Ellora plates or Ahmadnagar plates), as such names are often misleading and not connected with the production or the primary life of the object; these names, once used, have an unfortunate tendency to persist. With simple numeric or alphabetical schemes, there is no danger of associating a hierarchy of social values through the nomenclature.

33 Jivanji Jamshedji Modi, “A copper-plate inscription of Khandesh”, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica 1913–14, pp. 5–12, Plate II; G. Yazdani, “Remarks on the date of a copper plate inscription of Khandesh”, EIM 1914–5, p. 41, gives a corrected reading of the date for this charter.

34 Samudragupta Patil, “Bādaśāha Sultāna Humāyuna Bāhamani kāḷātila puñja Eklāra tāmrapaṭa”, in Samshodhak [Journal of the Itihasacharya Vi. Ka. Rajwade Samshodhan Mandal (V.K. Rajwade Research Society), Dhule] (March–June 1993), 50–6, claimed that the original rumal from which the contents of the copper-plate are extracted is extant, and has been seen by that author. However, personal communication with the author of that essay could not confirm this information.

35 This object does not have an accession number, and it was possible to photograph it only with another older copper-plate obscuring it in part.

36 It is in the private collection of Mr Godbole, Sanjay of Pune, who wrote a brief notice about it along with a reading in “Copper plate grant of Nizam of Hyderabad” in Studies in Indian Epigraphy: Journal of the Epigraphical Society of India v. 38, 2013, 102–5Google Scholar.

37 For the etymology of the word naqsheh see ʿAlī Akbar Dihkhudā (ed.), Lughatnāmah (Tehran: Muʾassasah-ʾi Intishārāt va Chāp-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1993–95) v. 13, p. 20044.

38 According to Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, the orthographic practice of using four dots appears in north India very late, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, “three dots, or two dots plus a squiggle, or 4 dots plus a squiggle, or 4 dots alone, begin to appear by late 18th c.” (Personal communication, 5 March, 2011).

39 For the language of the land grants and orders sultanates, see Khan (ed.), Farmans and Sanads.

40 Kulke, “Some observations”, 242.

41 Alam, Muzaffar, “The pursuit of Persian: language in Mughal politics”, Modern Asian Studies 32/2, 1998, 317–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The culture and politics of Persian in precolonial Hindustan”, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

42 The Persian term “āfāqī” was commonly used in sultanate literature of the Deccan; literally meaning “of the horizon, i.e. foreigner”, it was used to refer to the Persian-speaking immigrants from Iranian lands.

43 Guha, Sumit, “Transitions and translations: regional power and vernacular identity in the Dakhan, 1500–1800”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24/2, 2004, 24–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.