Sircar, Indian Epigraphical Glossary (IEG)
IEG is D. C. Sircar's Indian Epigraphical Glossary (1966) — a specialist glossary of the
technical terms (administrative, fiscal, legal, social) that occur in Indian inscriptions,
each defined and tied to the epigraphical corpus it comes from. Glosses are in English.
At a glance
| Code | IEG (source in csl-orig/v02/ieg; no separate repo) |
| Full title | Indian Epigraphical Glossary |
| Author | D. C. Sircar |
| Year / size | 1966 · ~580 pages |
| Type | Glossary of epigraphical terms (Sanskrit/Prakrit → English) |
| Source | csl-orig/v02/ieg/ |
| Open | Basic · List · Advanced · Mobile |
| Data | Downloads |
| csl-doc | ieg.rst |
When to use it
Reach for IEG when reading inscriptions and you meet an administrative, fiscal, or legal
term that a literary dictionary won't gloss in its technical sense. For general meanings use
Monier-Williams (MW).
Reading an entry
Each entry is a term (<k1>) with the inscription corpus it occurs in and an English gloss.
The first entry (csl-orig/v02/ieg/ieg.txt):
<L>1<pc>001<k1>AbADa<k2>AbADa
{%ābādha%}¦ (CII 1), illness.
| In the source | Meaning |
|---|---|
{%ābādha%} | the term (search key <k1> is SLP1) |
(CII 1) | the source — Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 1 |
illness | the English gloss |
See Data Formats for the markup reference.
What makes it distinctive
- Built for inscriptions. Administrative/technical senses, keyed to the epigraphical corpus.
- The standard reference for epigraphical terminology (Sircar).
Headword key conventions
<k1> = <k2> = SLP1 (epigraphical technical term). Glosses are terse English definitions with a corpus source in parentheses.
| Convention | Marker / form | Example | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search key | SLP1 (technical term) | AbADa | k1 = k2 |
| Body form | IAST italic {%…%} | {%ābādha%} | The printed form |
| Corpus source | (CII N) etc. | (CII 1) = Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 1 | Where the term appears in the epigraphic record |
| Gloss | Terse English | illness | The specialized epigraphical meaning |
Abbreviations
No machine-readable abbreviation list yet; the legend lives in the scanned front matter. View front matter →
See also
- Personal & Geographical Names in the Gupta Inscriptions (PGN) — names from inscriptions
- Monier-Williams (MW) · the full catalog
- csl-doc ieg.rst