Writings: HinduismThe Veal Kantel inscription (K. 359)7 of 10

Writings: Hinduism

The Veal Kantel inscription (K. 359)

K. 359 is a stone slab from Veal Kantel in ancient Cambodia, carved with seven Sanskrit verses. They say a brahman gave a complete Mahabharata, a Ramayana, and a Purana, and began a daily recitation. The DHARMA edition dates it to the seventh century CE by its lettering; Barth, in 1885, to the century's first years. No year is carved.

Last reviewed:

Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    ISKCON Educational Services, a Vaishnava source, credits the poet-sage Valmiki and says some Hindus place Rama in the Treta Yuga, the second of four ages of the world, while others place him far more recently; it gives no year for either. It adds that unnamed Indian scholars date Valmiki to the third millennium BCE (3000 to 2001 BCE), a report of scholars' dating, not a year the tradition itself gives. Velcheru Narayana Rao, reporting the Hindu scholarly tradition, gives no year.

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    about 750 to 200 BCE (two scholars' dates that do not overlap: 750 to 500 BCE, Velcheru Narayana Rao, for the epic in its current form; about 400 to 200 BCE, Alf Hiltebeitel; ISKCON's page adds that scholars say the epic took its present shape perhaps as late as the 2nd century CE)

  3. This copy made

    7th century CE (by the style of the lettering, in the DHARMA edition by Kunthea Chhom, Gerdi Gerschheimer, and Dominic Goodall; the first years of the 7th century CE, in Auguste Barth's 1885 edition)

  4. This copy found

    by 1885, when Auguste Barth published it; the stone came from Prasat Ba An, a kilometer west of Veal Kantel; the finder and the year of the find are not recorded

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

K. 359 is a stone slab carved with seven Sanskrit verses in the Khmer script, one verse to a line. Auguste Barth, who first published it in 1885, describes a flat, square stone, a kind of pedestal, carved on one side. It lacks, he notes, the socket that bases for a statue or a linga usually have.12 In Dominic Goodall's translation, a brahman named Akrtisvamin, foremost among those who knew the Samaveda (a Vedic collection of chants), married the sister of a man named Bhavavarman. He installed Tribhuvaneshvara together with a statue of Somasarman, gave a complete Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Purana, and began a daily, unbroken recitation.23

The translation reads Tribhuvaneshvara as a linga and sets the words that say so in angle brackets; the Sanskrit in line 3 names Shri-Tribhuvaneshvara and has no word for linga. Barth read instead an image of Tribhuvaneshvara, which he glosses as the Lord of the three worlds, set up with a figure of the Sun by a brahman he reads as Somasarman.21

As background on the linga, Nancy Falk notes that in temples of Shiva the central image is always the linga, a form not shaped like a person. Hugh Urban's account of Shaiva worship says Shiva is believed to be literally, not just symbolically, present in his physical representations, an abstract linga among them (see Hindu Practices).45

The last three verses are damaged, and each has lost its second half.1 Goodall reads Akrtisvamin as the donor where Barth reads Somasarman, and he takes Somasarman to be the person shown in the statue.2

How the copy was dated

No year is carved on the stone. The DHARMA edition, by Kunthea Chhom, Gerdi Gerschheimer, and Goodall, states that the lettering is characteristic of the seventh century CE. That is dating by the style of the writing, called paleography.2 Barth wrote in 1885 that the stone was certainly from the first years of the seventh century. The passage read compares the letters with those of other inscriptions in his book and does not say how he reached that date.1

The sources used here report no dispute over the seventh-century reading. For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The date strip marks the Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic about the prince Rama.6 Verse 4 also names the Mahabharata, a long Sanskrit epic treated in the Khoh charter entry, and a Purana that it does not name.2

The tradition's account (a Vaishnava source, and a scholar's report)

ISKCON Educational Services, a Vaishnava source (Vaishnavas worship Vishnu and his incarnations, especially Krishna and Rama),7 writes that the poet-sage Valmiki compiled the Ramayana. It adds that some Hindus date Rama to the Treta Yuga, the second of four ages of the world, while others consider him far more recent. It also reports that unnamed Indian scholars date Valmiki to the third millennium BCE.68

Velcheru Narayana Rao reports that in the Hindu scholarly tradition the epic is believed to be the first poem, the work of one poet, Valmiki.9 Neither source gives a year of the tradition's own. The sources used here include no statement on the epic's date or authorship from a Shaiva or Shakta tradition (centered on Shiva and on the goddess Shakti).10

Scholars of the epic

Alf Hiltebeitel dates the Ramayana to about 400 to 200 BCE.11

Narayana Rao writes that the date of the epic is nearly impossible to fix with certainty. He adds that scholarly work narrows the date of the epic in its current form to between 750 and 500 BCE.9 The same ISKCON page reports that scholars say it received its present shape perhaps as late as the second century CE, and that it contains much older material.6 Barth, publishing this stone in 1885, wrote that Albrecht Weber had trouble finding assured evidence of the Ramayana's age. Barth treated this stone, from the edge of Laos, as such evidence and wrote that the poem was held sacred in that distant land.1

How it was found

Barth wrote that he had no information on Veal Kantel beyond its place in the Siamese province he spells Tonle Ropou, on the upper Mekong. The stone, he says, came from Prasat Ba An, a kilometer west of Veal Kantel.1 He names no finder and no year of the find.

The DHARMA record gives the find-spot as Veal Kantel and no more, and it names no holder: the repository field points to outside metadata. The edition by Barth (1885, with a French translation) was followed by Goodall's (2017, with an English one).2 None of the sources used says where the slab is now.

What it shows, and what it does not

It shows that by the seventh century CE, on the DHARMA edition's dating by the lettering, someone in the Khmer lands gave a complete Mahabharata, a Ramayana, and a Purana, and began a daily recitation of them. Barth reads these as gifts to the god of the shrine.1 Verse 7 speaks of anyone who would take even one book from the place, in a reading the edition marks as partly unclear.2

It does not show that the epics given matched the texts now read. The inscription calls the Mahabharata complete, and the Purana is not named. The stone does not say where the copies came from, whether written locally or brought from India, or what became of them. Barth read the damaged last verses as promising blessings to those who join the readings and cursing anyone who removes a volume, while Goodall's translation leaves those lines incomplete.21 And the stone gives a latest date for the epics in some form, not their date of composition.

See also

Sources

  1. Auguste Barth. Inscriptions sanscrites du Cambodge (Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque nationale, vol. 27, part 1). Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 1885, pp. 28 to 31 (inscription IV, Veal Kantel). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  2. Kunthea Chhom (digital edition), Gerdi Gerschheimer and Dominic Goodall (edition). K. 359. Stone slab from Veal Kantel, 7th century CE (DHARMA_INSCIK00359). DHARMA (Development of Digital Resources for the Study of Indic Languages and Cultures), the edition, the translation by Goodall (2017), the French translation by Barth (1885), the apparatus, and the bibliography. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  3. E. H. Rick Jarow. Puranas. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  4. Nancy Auer Falk. Puja: Hindu Puja. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  5. Hugh B. Urban. Hinduism: Shaivism. Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices (Gale), via Encyclopedia.com. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  6. ISKCON Educational Services. Heart of Hinduism: Smriti: The Ramayana. ISKCON Educational Services. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  7. Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Dancing with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism, sixth edition: Sloka 9, What Is the Devotional Vaishnava Sect?. Himalayan Academy (web edition), 2003, Sloka 9, What Is the Devotional Vaishnava Sect?. Accessed 2026-10-29.
  8. ISKCON Educational Services. Heart of Hinduism: The Tradition's Own Version. ISKCON Educational Services. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  9. Velcheru Narayana Rao. Ramayana. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  10. Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Dancing with Siva, Hinduism's Contemporary Catechism, sixth edition, "What Are Hinduism's Principal Sects?". Himalayan Academy, 2003, chapter 1, sloka 6. Accessed 2026-10-28.
  11. Alf Hiltebeitel. Hinduism. Encyclopedia of Religion, second edition (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, 2005. Accessed 2026-10-29.