Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c6.16

c6.16

Sircar’s estimate of 90,000 inscriptions from India presumably does not include inscriptions in the neighboring South Asian countries of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, which would add many thousands more to the total. Inscriptions in Indian languages, moreover, are also found in large numbers over a vast area of Asia and even beyond Asia, for instance, in Africa.¹¹ The comments made earlier about the prime importance of Indian inscriptions apply equally to these extra-Indian inscriptions, many of which constitute our principal, sometimes even our sole, source for the historical study of the Indianized civilizations of ancient Southeast and central Asia.