Early South Indian Palaeography c3.1

c3.1

The history of the study of Indian Palaeography is nearly two centuries old, and its commencement synchronised with the foundation of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta by Sir William Jones in 1784. South Indian Palaeography, however, did not receive any attention till the days of Colonel Colin Mackenzie, the Surveyor-General of the British East India Company in South India during the first two decades of the last century and Babington (1828) who prepared a table of letters based on the Sanskrit and Tamil inscriptions at Māmallapuram. In 1833 Sir Walter Elliot prepared an elaborate table of the earlier forms of the Kannaḍa alphabet, while four years later captain H. Harkness compiled his *Ancient and Modern Alphabets of the popular Hindu Languages of the Southern Peninsula of India*. But the first systematic work on South Indian Palaeography was done by A. C. Burnell who produced in 1874 a valuable book on the subject *Elements of South Indian Palaeography (from the 4th to the 14th century A.D.)*, being an introduction to the study of South Indian inscriptions and manuscripts. In 1896 John George Buhler brought out a monumental work on Indian Epigraphy called *Indische Palaeographie* which even now serves as a standard work on the subject. Originally written in German, it was translated into English in Volume XXXIII of the *Indian Antiquary* by J. F. Fleet. He made a comparative study of the different forms which the scripts assumed with the progress of time and was able to "illustrate most of the Indian alphabets by cuttings from facsimiles, instead of hand-drawn signs." He has given in his work considerable space to the early South Indian scripts and pointed out some of the main differences between the North Indian and South Indian ones. G. H. Ojha's book in Hindi called *Bharatiya Pracina Lipimala (the Palaeography of Ancient India)*, published in 1918, contains a short account of the evolution of the South Indian scripts also. Ahmad Hasan Dani's *Indian Palaeography* (1963) is the latest general book on the subject and deals with the Palaeography of South India also, D. C. Sircar's book, *Indian Epigraphy* (1964), which is a comprehensive treatment of the subject does not deal with Palaeography which he has promised to bring out in a separate volume. Raj Bali Pandey's *Indian Palaeography* (1952) which is a general and useful book on the subject does not deal with South Indian Palaeography or Epigraphy.