Indian Epigraphy c17.17

c17.17

It is extremely difficult for a non-palaeographist to copy satisfactorily an old inscription in Brāhmī or Kharoṣṭhī because there are very few inscriptions in which all the letters are clearly visible to the unskilled eye. Moreover, books containing facsimiles of inscriptions are not easily available to the ordinary reader. It is therefore interesting to note that the Rummindei edict happens to be the only small inscription of Aśoka, in which almost all the letters are distinct and of which a clear representation appeared early in this century in text books meant for colleges and schools. V. A. Smith published a retouched facsimile of the record in his *Oxford History of India* and *Oxford School History of India*, prescribed respectively for the B.A. and Entrance (Matriculation) Examinations of the Indian Universities. The same facsimile became widely known in Eastern India with its reproduction in Haraprasad Sastri’s History of India (in Bengali) meant for school children and later in some other text books of the kind. There can hardly be any doubt that the people responsible for the Kapileśvara inscription copied it from the said facsimile not much earlier than 1928.