Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s11: 2.11 Tracings of cave inscriptions
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s11
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2.11 Tracings of cave inscriptions
c21.s11.1
Inscriptions are normally illustrated with mechanically prepared estampages. Direct photographs of stone inscriptions, except in very favourable circumstances, are seldom satisfactory, and eye copies are not acceptable as they are liable to subjective error. However, an extraordinary situation prevailed in the case of the Tamil cave inscriptions calling for extraordinary remedies. Estampages had been published in the *ARE* and experts of the calibre of Krishna Sastri and Subrahmanya Aiyer had attempted to read them but not too successfully. There was a stalemate with no further progress for four decades between 1924 and 1964. Photographs of fresh estampages made by the ASI in 1963-64 were not noticeably better than the earlier ones. The option of publishing my readings without illustrations did not appeal to me. I was eager to communicate to the scholarly world what I saw–and what I saw was quite different from what had been published till then. It was in these exceptional circumstances that I adopted the unconventional course of preparing tracings direct from the stone and publishing them in support of my revised readings of the cave inscriptions.
c21.s11.2
The following is a brief account of how the tracings were made (Fig. 2.¹). The rock surface was first cleaned to remove dirt, moss, etc. The grooves of the inscriptions were marked with chalk for better visibility through the translucent tracing paper which was then affixed to the rock surface with adhesive tape. The paper was then carefully squeezed into the grooves and a pencil was run along the sharp edges of the grooves to delineate the outline of the letters. After some experimentation and practice, we were able to make reasonably accurate tracings. Generally, more than one tracing was taken of each inscription. Finally, fair copies of the tracings were made in Indian ink for publication.
c21.s11.3
¹ R. Nagaswamy, Director of Archaeology, Tamil Nadu, provided all the necessary facilities for the field work and accompanied me to many of the caves. R. Selvakumaraswamy, Executive Engineer, provided technical support especially for erecting the scaffolding. Madagadi K. Thangavelu, civil engineer and expert draughtsman, prepared the tracings under my supervision.