Studies in Cola History and Administration c9.30

c9.30

religious charities. The inscriptions themselves are engraved mostly on temple walls; and they generally register endowments of money, land or cattle for the maintenance of lamps and festivals and other means of securing religious merit for the donors or their friends and relatives. This common trait in our inscriptions has led scholars sometimes to underrate their importance in the study of social history and to brush them aside as a mass of dull and dreary narrations of puerile transactions. This tendency is apt to grow if scholars have to depend on bald and occasionally inaccurate summaries of these records, without being able to examine closely the texts themselves. But even the published summaries, if carefully used, can tell us a great deal that is interesting and important about the social and economic life of the country in the past.