Indian Epigraphy c6.s2.16

c6.s2.16

About the beginning of the present century, V. A. Smith published his celebrated work entitled *Early History of India*, in which an attempt to ‘sort and arrange the accumulated stores of knowledge’ in a somewhat connected account of the political and cultural history of ancient India was made for the first time. The book was revised and enlarged in subsequent editions published in 1908, 1914 and 1924, the last one appearing shortly after the author’s death. The importance of the discovery and study of new inscriptions in the reconstruction of ancient Indian history and the progress made year after year becomes perfectly clear from a comparative study of the successive editions of Smith’s work and H. C. Raychaudhuri’s *Political History of Ancient India* first published in 1923 and revised in 1927,