‘Stone inscriptions are the original documents of a City’

CHENNAI: When P L Udaya Kumar asked the audience, ‘How old is your city?’, many came up with different digits. While some said Madraspatnam (or Madras) was built by the British in 1639, others said the city came into being in 1669. However, Udayakumar played a video, which took the

audience

to Penneswaramadam, a village in Krishnagiri district where the inscription on a rock had mentioned Madraspatnam way back in 1367. The idea was to show how important is the role played by ancient inscriptions in the social and cultural development of a city and its people.

Stone inscriptions

are original documentation of the people of a region, their culture, religion, and language. Even though Udaya Kumar started with Madraspatnam, he soon shifted his focus on Bengaluru where a team led by him preserved ancient inscriptions dating from 750-1800 AD, which were found hidden under drainage slabs and crematoriums. Rampant urbanization in Bengaluru has led to the destruction of a majority of the 150 stones in the old ‘Bangalore’ region, which was painstakingly documented by British archaeologist and historian B Lewis Rice and others between 1894 and 1905. Their findings are compiled in the twelve-volume ‘Epigraphia Carnatica’ series.

However, since the launch of “Inscription Stones of Bangalore”, a citizen activism project to raise awareness and protect ancient inscription stones, things have changed.

The project has been using technology (social media, mapping, 3D scanning, 3D printing and Optical character recognition) to protect, preserve and restore the last few remaining inscription stones of Bengaluru.

It was a telephone call from an auto driver that helped Udaya Kumar and his team to rescue the martyr stone supposed to have erected for the warrior who defended a town called Kaneli. “The stone was lying surrounded by filth. The inscriptions show it was 1,100 years old. It was a turning point and we started getting calls from people,” said Udaya Kumar while sharing his experience at the monthly meeting of the Tamil Heritage Trust in the city recently.

The team of likeminded people from various walks of life preserved many inscriptions later. “We could preserve the 750 AD Perbal (Hebbal) inscriptions in T Dasarahalli and another 14th century old Hoisala inscription and 10th century Jakkur inscriptions,” he said.

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