Indian Epigraphy c6.s2.7

c6.s2.7

Out of the numerous epigraphic records discovered respectively till the seventies and eighties of the 19th century, Alexander Cunningham, the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (1871-85)¹, collected those of Aśoka in a volume,² and J. F. Fleet edited the inscriptions of the Gupta age³ as Epigraphist to the Government of India (1883-86). E. Hultzsch, as Epigraphist to the Government of Madras (1886-1903), published the first volume of his *South Indian Inscriptions* in 1890.⁴ About a year earlier, J. Burgess, Cunningham's successor as Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India, started an official journal entitled *Epigraphia Indica* exclusively for the publication of inscriptions.⁵