Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c12.s2.t1.9

c12.s2.t1.9

Nonetheless, direct correlations between the literary and the inscriptional texts are on the whole disappointingly few.²⁶ It would appear that, for one thing, *praśastis* were essentially ephemeral compositions; in Diskalkar's words, “[T]he praśastis were rarely copied down and circulated among the literary world. They had their importance for the time being and though remembered by the court poets were forgotten by the general scholarly world” (JIH 38, 298). Second, it seems that, in many cases, “the inscriptional poets were not always real poets of inspiration but poets of accomplishment” (ibid., 298) who were “really practical men” and “more pandits than poets” (ibid., 299); that is to say, becoming a favored court poet may often have had more to do with political than literary skills. Moreover, poets of true talent who did attain to such positions may have expended their best efforts on other compositions (though unfortunately very few of such have been preserved; cf. Diskalkar 301), while the composition of panegyrics was perhaps more a labor of daily bread than of love.