The South Asia Inscriptions Database

SIDDHAM or the Asia Inscriptions Database is an open-access resource for the study of inscriptions from Asia. SIDDHAM was established by the European Research Council with start-up funding from the project Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State. The first focus of SIDDHAM was Sanskrit epigraphy, mainly of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries CE, but the platform is designed to accommodate inscriptions from all periods and regions. The corpus is vast: in South Asia alone, the estimated number of historic inscriptions is 90,000.[1]

SIDDHAM is designed to allow the data to be interrogated across regions, subjects and languages. Inscriptions in any language with an epigraphic tradition are included: Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada, Prakrit, Sinhala, Tibetan, Chinese, Burmese, Pyu, Mon and Khmer, Arabic and Persian.

The Name

In Sanskrit the word siddhaṃ means "success, accomplished, perfected." It was also a symbol and substitution for an "auspicious sign" found in the oldest Asian inscriptions. In some cases, siddhaṃ is not spelled out, but indicated with a sign such as Om or a srivasta, and various scholars consider siddhaṃ in inscriptions to be equivalent to these signs.[2]

Technical background

Some of the records in SIDDHAM have been prepared in EpiDoc, a tool for structured markup of epigraphic documents in TEI XML. Other records are presented as simple text documents. All unicode scripts can be accommodated.

Features

Within SIDDHAM, each item is listed firstly as an object -- such as a pillar, sculpture, stone slab, copper-plate and so forth. Each object may carry one or more inscriptions, thus each individual inscription has been assigned a separate SIDDHAM number. A useful example is the Allahabad pillar -- a single object -- which carries many inscriptions, among them those of Aśoka, Samudragupta and Jahāngīr.[3] The inscription of Samudragupta appears in Siddham as IN00001, inscribed on OB0001.[4]

A second example showing the features of the site is the Chinese inscription on a sculpture of seven Buddhas and Maitreya from Bodh Gaya.[5]

Translations

Translations of inscription texts into western languages are given where available. Translations are collected and archived separately in the Zenodo community called SIDDHAṂ traductions .

WIKIPEDIA and WIKICOMMONS

SIDDHAM makes full use of Wikipedia and Wikicommons, with embedded hyper-links to images and Wikipedia articles that provide further informations about people, places, objects and special terms.

Communities

A unique feature of the SIDDHAM site is the community structure. Because data is added on a collaborative basis, those contributing to the site are assigned a community in the area of their special interest. Contributors can add and edit in their community, but cannot edit the materials added by others. This protects the materials of each contributor and allows individuals to configure and style information according to their needs and research interests. In different countries and cultural areas, there are sometimes long-standing protocols for numbering inscriptions. For example, within Khmer epigraphy, inscriptions have been assigned K-numbers for more than a century, a system maintained by EFEO.[6] SIDDHAM is designed to allow the use of this and other established numbering systems.[7]

GIS & Mapping

Epigraphic documentation involves mapping the sites where inscriptions were found. The mapping data is added in the appropriate section of the 'tool box' for each object. Contributors have used a range of mapping resources including Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap, as well has scanned maps and plans archived in Zenodo.

Paleography

While SIDDHAM offers images of inscriptions, objects and the sites where records are located, it is not designed as a tool for the analysis of palaeographic styles. For this, the SIDDHAM links outward to relevant online resources such as INDOSKRIPT.[8] For example, in the case of the pillar inscription of Samudragupta, the record is hyper-linked to no. 75 in INDOSKRIPT[9]

Archive of digital assets

All material generated for SIDDHAM is archived automatically in Zenodo. Zenodo is also used for source materials available in PDF and other digital formats.[10]


References
  1. Salomon, Richard. Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  2. Lore Sander (1986), Om or Siddham–Remarks on Openings of Buddhist Manuscripts and Inscriptions from Gilgit and Central Asia, in Deyadharma: Studies in Memory of Dr. DC Sircar, pages 251-261
  3. Falk, Harry. Aśokan Sites and Artefacts: A Source-Book with Bibliography. Mainz am Rhein: Ph. von Zabern, 2006.
  4. See: https://siddham.network/object/ob00001/
  5. https://siddham.network/object/obch0005/
  6. https://cik.efeo.fr/inventaire-cik-des-inscriptions-khmeres/
  7. https://siddham.network/community/khmer-epigraphy/
  8. See: http://www.indoskript.org
  9. See https://siddham.network/inscription/in00001/
  10. See https://zenodo.org/communities/siddhamassets/
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