tour 22 of 22
Enlightenment: Ancient Scripts
Brick with Sanskrit inscription
Markham Kittoe (1808-1853) found this brick in
a field in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Kittoe served as
an officer in the British army in India and later became the
Archaeological Enquirer to the government in the North Western
Provinces.
The brick is
dated Sunday 11 June 1217 and has inscriptions in Sanskrit and a
local dialect, which are written in Nagari script. These
inscriptions record a mortgage for the sum of 'two thousand
two hundred and fifty Shadbodika drammas' taken out by
'ra[ja] Gangadeva, son of ra[ja] Dhanu' against
land that he owned.
These
inscriptions also gave scholars an important insight into the
structure of Indian society in the thirteenth century. Several
nineteenth-century publications reported the brick's
discovery and gave translations of its
inscriptions.