Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c8.s4.2

c8.s4.2

The study of inscriptions in the New Indo-Aryan languages could well be described as the stepchild of Indian epigraphy. Compared with the attention which has been paid to Old and Middle Indo-Aryan inscriptions on the one hand, and to Dravidian on the other, NIA epigraphy is virtually an untouched field. Reliable collections and studies are lacking for most of the NIA languages (Tuḷpuḷe’s *Prācīna Marāṭhī Korīva Lekha* is one of the few important exceptions), and many of the collections and editions of individual inscriptions are in local publications and/or in the various regional languages concerned, rendering them difficult of access to the scholarly community as a whole. Although editions of NIA inscriptions are occasionally published in *EI* and other major journals, the majority have been merely reported in *ARIE*, often with only the vague designation of “local dialect,” and never properly published elsewhere. Because of these problems, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive and reliable survey of the subject; what is presented here is based on the available published materials but can hardly be considered complete or authoritative.