Abstract: This presentation will offer a comprehensive overview of the land demarcation practice evinced in the copperplate grants of the Eastern Cālukyas of Veṅgī, including a cursory comparison to the practice of some predecessor dynasties in the broader region. The manner in which a charter pinpoints the location and specifies the extent of granted land varies considerably from grant to grant, but nevertheless certain patterns become apparent over the nearly five centuries of Cālukya rule. The general trend is toward increasingly specific demarcation of boundaries and progressive standardisation of the formulation. This may imply an evolution of the relevant bureaucratic apparatus as well as an increase in the density of cultivated land.
About the speaker: Dániel Balogh is a Sanskrit philologist with a specialisation in epigraphy and digital humanities. From 2015 to 2019 he was affiliated to the British Museum working on Guptaperiod Sanskrit inscriptions in the ERC project Beyond Boundaries. Since 2019 he has been stationed in Berlin (Humboldt University) under the auspices of the ERC project DHARMA, studying the copperplate records of the Eastern Cālukya dynasty and developing standards for the digital editing of Indic epigraphic texts.