Place · early copper-plate record · India
Sohgaura copper plate
Also known as Sohgaura, Sohgaura plate
A small inscribed copper plate from a village in Gorakhpur district, pre-Ashokan or very early Mauryan, recording three storehouses and the conditions on which their grain may be drawn — administration rather than religion or royal praise, and among the oldest Indian writing on metal.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.400, 83.300
Worth knowing
It is four lines long and it is one of the very few documents of ordinary Mauryan-period government that survives. The Mahasthangarh stone plaque in Bengal, also about famine grain, is its closest parallel, six hundred kilometres east.
Connections (2)
- Imperial inscription atPātaliputra
The Sohgaura copper plate and the Mahasthangarh stone record are short administrative texts about famine relief granaries, probably pre-Ashokan or very early Mauryan — writing used for stores and distribution rather than for religion or royal praise. They are the closest thing we have to an ordinary document of the Mauryan state, and both come from the eastern territory Pataliputra administered.
- Succession in timeAshoka
The Sohgaura copper plate and the Mahāsthāngarh stone are possibly pre-Mauryan and are both about famine relief — granaries listed with their contents, grain and coin ordered distributed to a people in distress. The earliest Indian writing anyone can read is therefore administrative and about hunger, which is a considerable contrast with Ashoka's edicts a century later, where a king explains himself to his subjects in the first person.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sohgaura copper plate inscription”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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