Early South Indian Palaeography c3.3

c3.3

So early as 1883 Burgess wrote: "As applied to Indian inscriptions, comparative palaeography has as yet made little progress towards scientific accuracy, and much has still to be done before we can use the characters of different inscriptions with full confidence as a safe guide to chronology." This observation is still true, though some work on the South Indian inscriptions and their palaeography has been done so far. For such study actual impressions and facsimiles of inscriptions are needed; and the publication of photo copies of some of the South Indian inscriptions in the volumes of the *Epigraphia Indica* and *South Indian Inscriptions* has helped to a great extent the study of the evolution of writing in South India.