Eighteenth-Century Inscription Unearthed in India

THANJAVUR, INDIA—According to a report in The Times of India, local people in the village of Perumagalur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu uncovered an inscribed stone measuring about five feet long and two feet wide at the Somanathar temple during renovation work. An archaeologist named Manimaran of the Saraswathi Mahal Library and a team of epigraphists determined the text was written in a script used to write the Marathi language, which was primarily spoken in the state of Maharashtra, located to the north. Manimaran explained that the text described donations made by the eighteenth-century Maratha ruler Prathaba Simhan to the temple. The text was repeated in the Tamil language on the other side of the stone, though this inscription is no longer legible, he added.