Reh Inscription
ancient Prakrit inscription below Shiva linga
The Reh Inscription was discovered in 1979 near the Reh archaeological site along Yamuna River about 350 kilometres (220 mi) east of Mathura in India. It is a Prakrit inscription in Brahmi script near the bottom of a Shiva linga. The inscription is dated to between the 2nd century BCE and 2nd century CE based on the script style.
The fragmentary inscription was published by the historian G. R. Sharma in 1980, who proposed that it mentions the Indo-Greek king Menander I. This theory has been discredited by other scholars such as B.N. Mukherjee and Richard Salomon, though the Reh inscription is acknowledged as an important new discovery. The Reh inscription is significant in establishing the existence of aniconic representation of Shiva and Shaivism ideas in ancient north India.
Location
The Reh inscription is found on a Shiva linga pillar in a Hindu temple. It was discovered by an Indian research student of Allahabad University named D.P. Sharma who was visiting Reh, Fatehpur district, Uttar Pradesh, in the Ganges valley. The site is about 96 kilometres (60 mi) west of Kausambi and 350 kilometres (220 mi) south-east of Mathura, on the left bank of the Yamuna river.
Inscription
The fragmentary Brahmi script inscription is on the bottom of a polished Shiva linga shaft made from sandstone that was at some point cut out from its original location. Three of its lines are well preserved, the fourth is at the edge of where the linga was cut off and is damaged.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reh Inscription” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.