Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c12.s6.1

c12.s6.1

The subjects discussed so far do not begin to exhaust the contributions of inscriptions to Indological studies as a whole, and the list could be expanded almost ad infinitum; in this section only a few more examples may be given. For one, epigraphy constitutes a prime source of information for the field of *onomastics*. The principal general work on this field (now outdated but still unsuperseded), Alfons Hilka's *Die altindischen Personennamen*,⁷⁸ makes extensive use of inscriptional evidence along with literary sources. The only major recent study in this field is Tej Ram Sharma's *Personal and Geographical Names in the Gupta Inscriptions*.⁷⁹