Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c6.18

c6.18

The number of known inscriptions, moreover, is constantly growing as new records, including many of considerable importance, continue to be discovered within and outside of India every year.¹² A complete history of India written today, taking into account all recent epigraphic discoveries, would be significantly different from and more complete than one written, for example, only twenty years ago; there is no reason to think that this pattern should change in the foreseeable future. Moreover, as also noted by Sircar,¹³ a great many of the estimated 90,000 inscriptions already found in India have not yet been published. While it is true that many of the still unpublished records are either of minimal importance or too badly damaged to be deciphered, no doubt some of them will, when they are finally published, add significantly to our historical and cultural knowledge. Sircar thus decries the incorrect notion “that all important inscriptions have already been discovered and utilized in the reconstruction of the lost history of ancient India and that there is little else to do.”¹⁴ Epigraphy is indeed still a living and developing field, even if it has in recent years suffered something of a decline in standards in India¹⁵ and a general neglect elsewhere.¹⁶