Indian Paleography

Professor Buhler`S Indische Palaeographie, Consisting Of 96 Pages With 9 Plates Of Alphabetical Characters And Numerals And 8 Tables Of Explanatory Transliteration Of Them, Was Originally Published In 1896. An English Version Of This Was Prepared By Professor Buhler Himself; The Manuscript Was On Its Way To The Press At The Time Of His Death. J.F. Fleet, With Great Difficulties, Recovered The Ms. And Got It Printed In Indian Antiquary. 1904, In The Form Of An Appendix. But It Was The Text Without The Plates And Tables. And That Had Been The Only Form In Which It Has So Far Been Available To Our Students And Scholars. It Is A Matter Of Great Satisfaction That For The First Time The Complete English Version Of Buhler`S Monumental Work, Along With The Plates And Tables, In Its Proper Book-Form Is Published. Page-References Of The German Original Are Indicated In Square Brackets Along With Fleet`S Valuable Introduction To The Text.

This book provides a general survey of all the inscriptional material in the Sanskrit, Prakrit, and modern Indo-Aryan languages, including donative, dedicatory, panegyric, ritual, and literary texts carved on stone, metal, and other materials. This material comprises many thousands of documents dating from a range of more than two millennia, found in India and the neighboring nations of South Asia, as well as in many parts of Southeast, central, and East Asia. The inscriptions are written, for the most part, in the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts and their many varieties and derivatives. Inscriptional materials are of particular importance for the study of the Indian world, constituting the most detailed and accurate historical and chronological data for nearly all aspects of traditional Indian culture in ancient and medieval times. Richard Salomon surveys the entire corpus of Indo-Aryan inscriptions in terms of their contents, languages, scripts, and historical and cultural significance. He presents this material in such a way as to make it useful not only to Indologists but also non-specialists, including persons working in other aspects of Indian or South Asian studies, as well as scholars of epigraphy and ancient history and culture in other regions of the world.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.