126 – Ai And Sanskrit Inscriptions On Buddhist Bronzes

This panel presents a new information system for a systematic study of Buddhist bronzes with Sanskrit inscriptions from historical Northwest India (now Pakistan). The information system was built with the database management tool Heurist, an open-source database management system with a web-front end. Heurist allows researchers without prior IT knowledge to develop data models, store search, and publish data on a website. The Buddhist bronzes information system contains on 50-60 ancient bronzes from the 6th-8th centuries, sponsored by the royal family Palola Ṣāhis. The royal family Palola Ṣāhis belonged to a dynasty of Buddhist kings in the Gilgit kingdom in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent in the 6th-8th centuries. The inscriptions of the bronzes are written in Sanskrit using two types of “Gandhāra-Brāhmī” handwriting. The research aims to link different data sources, including epigraphy and philology, to understand the history of these bronzes and their significance. The challenges in reconstructing e.g. the genealogy of the Palola Ṣāhis family include the limited number of scholars with expertise in old-Indian epigraphy who have studied the inscriptions, and the need for cooperation between disciplines such as Sanskrit Philology, Paleography, Archaeology, Early History of Buddhism, and Buddhist Art. We demonstrate the challenges to reconstruct the genealogy of the royal family Palola Ṣāhis dynasty by combining Large Language Models (LLMs) with traditional database systems. LLMs can process and analyze large amounts of textual data, including historical records and scholarly publications, to extract relevant information and identify patterns. Traditional database systems can store and organize e.g. structured data, such as archaeological findings and epigraphic details. By combining LLMs with database systems, researchers can use the strengths of both approaches to enrich historical research on the Palola Ṣāhis dynasty and the Buddhist bronzes.

Convenor

Sylvia Melzer -