36S • INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEYS. 



translations of ancient inscriptions, the whole to form a complete 

 Corpus Inscriptionum. This led to the appointment of Vishnu 

 Sastri Bapat as Pandit, who in the course of five years copied and 

 translated into Marathi some 88 Pali and Sanskrit inscriptions, but 

 none of them were published, and the death of the Pandit, the 

 Mutiny, and the transfer of the Government of India to the Crown 

 interrupted the work. 



About 1865 the Government began to take a keener interest in 

 the matter, and a photographic collection of 149 inscriptions on 

 copper plates and stone tablets, taken in Mysore by Lieut.-Col. 

 H. Dixon, 22nd Regiment, M.N.I. , was printed by the Government 

 of that State ; while Mr. (now Sir Theodore C.) Hope issued a 

 smaller collection of inscriptions in Dharwar and Mysore. A few 

 years later the Duke of Argyll, then Secretary of State for India, 

 forwarded a scheme to the Bombay Government, for the collection 

 and preservation of ancient Kanarese inscriptions, but it was not till 

 the starting of the " Indian Antiquary " in 1872, and the organization 

 of the Archaeological Survey of Western India in 1874 that 

 opportunity occurred for obtaining fac-similes of these and similar 

 records. A grant was made by Government to the "Indian Antiquary," 

 and this proved of great service by enabling a large number of 

 inscriptions to be photo-lithographed in Vols. III. to XIII., those in 

 Vols. VI. to XIII. being largely selected from Sir "Walter Elliot's 

 collection. 



In 1878, under the sanction of the Secretary of State for India, 

 a volume was produced by Messrs. Fleet and Burgess, containing, as 

 a basis, the collections of Colonel Dixon and by Dr. Pigou (which had 

 been included in Sir T. C. Hope's " Inscriptions in Dharwar and 

 Mysore"). These were supplemented by photographs taken by, and 

 lithographs from - stanvpages and rubbings made by the Archaeological 

 Survey of Western India, and Mr. Fleet, besides fac-similes of 

 other grants. But these were far from embracing even nearly 

 all the inscriptions from Western India and the Dekhan at present 

 available, for in the India Office Library, in the Royal Asiatic 

 Society, in the Bombay Asiatic Society, in the British Museum, 

 and in private hands both in India and in Europe, there are a 

 considerable number of copper-plate grants which, if published in 

 fac-simile, would fill up many lacunae, and supply important dates. 



To the volume on Pali, Sanskrit, and old Canarese inscriptions 

 is prefixed an important introductory chapter on Indian inscriptions, 

 the substance of which I have reproduced in the above sketch. 



