Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c3.3.3

c3.3.3

Books containing the various religious opinions that have prevailed more or less in these Hinduized, or rather Brahmanized, countries, are yet easily accessible; but the chronological framework is almost entirely wanting, and this can only be supplied from the inscriptions still existing in large numbers. If an outline of the historical events of the last fifteen centuries of South-Indian history could be gained from these inscriptions, the wearisome dry dogmatic treatises would begin to possess some human interest, and the faint outlines of a long obliterated picture would reappear; faintly at first, but with time and patient research, they would (like fossils in the hands of the geologist) present a living picture of a past, if not attractive, at all events strange. The prospect of such a result should tempt the few European students of Sanskrit in South-India who at present, in the hope of learning something of Indian matters, devote their attention to mechanical poems which repeat themselves with "most damnable iteration," or to plays composed by pedants during the worst times of India. This real history of South-India can only be gathered from inscriptions.