Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c11.s2.26

c11.s2.26

In the period in question, and in its latter half in particular, Indian scholars began to be increasingly active and influential in the field of epigraphy. Whereas at the turn of the century the subject had been dominated by Europeans, by the middle of the twentieth century it had become largely the preserve of Indians. Volume 17 (1923–24) of EI, for instance, was the first to The publication of anthologies and secondary works has also burgeoned in recent decades. Collections of inscriptions by state and region, works on general and specific paleographic topics, and historical and cultural studies of various corpora are being published in far greater numbers than ever before.¹²⁴ Among recent works of this class which uphold the best traditional standards of epigraphic research may be mentioned A. K. Bhattacharyya’s *Corpus of Dedicatory Inscriptions from Temples of West Bengal* and Mukunda Madhava Sharma’s *Inscriptions of Ancient Assam*. Nor has the modern period witnessed any slowing in the rate of discoveries of inscriptions; new items, including several of major importance (see various examples noted in section 4.3), continue to be found at a steady pace, as a result both of chance finds and of systematic surveys and planned expeditions. In the latter category, several of the excavations undertaken by the central and local archaeological departments have yielded abundant epigraphic results, for instance, those at Sālihuṇḍam, Sannati, and Nāgārjunakoṇḍa.