Mysore and Coorg from the Inscriptions c2.4

c2.4

As regards previous efforts in this direction, it is related that the Mysore king, Chikka-Dēva-Rājā, who ruled from 1672 to 1704, had lists and copies made of the inscriptions throughout his country, but this was for the purpose of checking the endowments. The register so compiled was unfortunately one of those in the royal library which, during the usurpation of the throne in the latter part of the eighteenth century, was ordered by Tipu Sultān to be taken for boiling the gram or *kulti* for the horses. On the restoration of the Hindū Rāj in 1799, during the Survey operations conducted at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, copies were taken of inscriptions to the number of several thousands. But neither would the former of these collections, had it survived, nor the latter, the examination of which would be but labour lost on account of its unreliable