Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.2

c3.2

From the beginning of this century (when Buchanan executed the only archæological survey that has ever been done in even a part of the South of India) up to the present time, a number of well meaning persons have gone about with much simplicity and faith collecting a mass of rubbish which they term traditions and accept as history. There is some excuse for Buchanan, but none for his followers; the persistent retailing of this "lying gabble" (as Genl. Cunningham aptly terms it) has well-nigh ruined the progress of Indian research, and caused the utter neglect of a subject that evidently promises much[^1). The Vedic literature will always remain the most attractive object of