A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.30

c6.30

While copper-plate inscriptions number all together only a few hundreds, stone inscriptions amount to several tens of thousands. Most of them are records of small gifts of lamps, sheep, land, and so on, to temples, and are of little historical value. Records of larger gifts, especially when they are made by the ruling monarchs, are sometimes of exceptional interest as they record details of taxes remitted in favour of donees and privileges conferred on them, and furnish other details of administrative organization and policy. The Tamil inscriptions of Chola Rājarāja I on the walls of the Tanjore temple deserve special mention for the technical perfection of their engraving and the complete and detailed picture they give of the entire economy of the Great Temple—a creation of Rājarāja calculated to symbolize all the glory and grandeur of the empire he had built up. Quite a number of other fairly long inscriptions give interesting information on the constitution and functions of village assemblies, the part played by craft and trade guilds in the economic and artistic life of the country, the courses of study and the numbers of pupils and teachers in important educational centres, and so on. The Tirumukkūdal inscription of Virarājendra is unique in the list it furnishes of the stock of medicines maintained in a hospital in the locality; and the Motupalli inscription of Kākatīya Ganapati is one of the very few records which give some idea of the conditions of maritime trade.