Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.13

c3.13

Many attempts have been made by Mackenzie, Sir W. Elliot, Mr. C. P. Brown, Mr. H. J. Stokes and others to collect the inscriptions of South-India; but, though the importance of this work has been often acknowledged, few results have followed, as no individual (except perhaps Sir W. Elliot) could hope to be able to finish such a task. When the greater part of the plates and text that follow were already printed (between one and two years ago), this important subject was still viewed with indifference; since then, the *Indian Antiquary* in Bombay, and the labours of Profr. Kern at Leiden and Profr. Eggeling in London raise hopes that will not be disappointed. The treatment of parts of the Açoka edicts by the former¹ marks the epoch of a real scientific study of Indian inscriptions, and his knowledge of Indian antiquities and ways of thought has cleared up what seemed likely to remain for ever obscure. Profr. Eggeling is the first to publish the W. Cālukya documents, and to show what they really mean. But the subjects of these researches present many difficulties. If South-Indian inscriptions present comparatively few puzzles, so far as the characters used are considered, they can only be satisfactorily explained by a knowledge of Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages which rests upon a more certain foundation than is now usual. If the absence of notes and abbreviations render transcription easy and certain, there is much in the language of the documents that will create serious difficulties. The earliest and most important grants for historical purposes are nearly all in Sanskrit, but the scribes were seldom content with leaving the names of places untranslated, and to restore these names to their Dravidian forms, and thus render identification possible, is often a task beset with difficulties². A large number of documents are in Canarese and Tamil, but as the orthography fluctuated, and the vocabularies of these languages have been but little studied in a scientific spirit, it is not too much to say that not a single early inscription in either of these languages has as yet been explained in a perfectly satisfactory manner¹). These documents contain the earliest specimens of the Dravidian languages (beyond single words), that we possess; they are, therefore, of capital importance for the comparative study of the South-Indian dialects, but have not as yet been used at all, except by Dr. Gundert.