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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 2.

2 THIE INDIAN EMPIRE [CHAP. upon monuments in the shape of great monolithic columns; as, for instance, in the case of some of the moral and religious edicts of A~Mka, and the panegyric on the two columns of victory at Mandas6r, in Milwa, which recites the conquests of king YaSddharman. Mostly, however, they are found engraved on metal plates, on stone tablets, on rocks, on walls and pillars and other parts of caves or of temples and other buildings, on pedestals of images and statues, and on relic-caskets. But they are occasionally found painted, and in a few instances written with ink. And some are found stamped on clay and bricks. For the purposes that we have in view, the inscriptions in- clude, with the exception of the legends on coins and gems, everything inscriptive, written, painted, stamped or engraved, public or private, lengthy or brief, that can be turned to account in connexion with the ancient past of India, in respect of the political history, the religious development, or any other line of research. Even the mere records of pilgrims' visits are of value, in establishing the antiquity of the sacred places visited by them, and of the towns from which they came. Even descriptive labels, incised as accompaniments to statues and sculptures, are valuable, in marking the ancient times to which traditions and legends and mythological notions may be carried back. Even a name stamped on a brick has been found of use, in determin- ing the period to which a building may be referred. And even masons' marks, in the form of alphabetical characters, have played an important part in the inquiry into the history of writing in India. Such are the remains with which we are to deal, and of which we shall speak either as 'inscriptions,' or as 'epigraphic records,' or simply as 'records,' according to the convenience of the moment. But we are to handle them to only a certain extent. There are technical details connected with the inscriptions into the treatment of which we cannot, for various reasons, enter here. For the palaeographic branch of Indian epigraphic research, which explains the alphabets in which the inscriptions were written, and deals with the origin and development of those alphabets, we can here only refer to Professor Biihler's Indische Palaeographie, published in i896. In respect of the languages used in the inscriptions, we can only say here that they include Sanskrit, Pali, some of the Prlkrits, the mixed dialect or dialects, and the older dialects of Kanarese, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu; adding that, though in this detail some of the records offer problems which have still to be solved, they present no substantial initial difficulties 'to explorers