Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c18.7

c18.7

About the begining of January 1950, I visited, in course of a search for inscriptions, certain villages in the neighbourhood of the Kiul and Luckeesarai railway stations on the former East Indian Railway (now Eastern Railway) about the western fringe of the Monghyr District of Bihar. Long ago, Alexander Cunningham made an epigraphical survey of many villages of South Bihar and the interesting results of that survey are recorded in his celebrated Reports. But it is doubtful if it was possible for him to visit all the villages. Moreover, images both inscribed and uninscribed, are being discovered every year in various villages of that area at the point of the cultivator's ploughshare and the workman's spade and a large number of them, discovered after Cunningham's survey, have accumulated in many villages. There is no doubt that many of such images have often been carried away from the find-spots by interested persons; but the epigraphic survey conducted by me only in a few villages convinced me fully that very good results may still be obtained if the images (unfortunately broken in most cases), scattered over almost all old villages in South Bihar, are made the object of a careful search in the line initiated by Cunningham more than eighty years back but not seriously continued afterwards.