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Rh Greater reliance is placed on the statements of grammars, manuscripts of which also are liable to the same defects as others, and whose statements themselves are very often open to serious question. It thus becomes evident how important is the aid which the readings of inscriptions contribute towards the construction of the history of the individual languages. The labours of the early epigraphists like Burnell, Bubler, Kielhorn, Temple, Grierson, Hultsch and a host of other workers in the field are now beginning to bear fruit, and the greater use is made of them by philologists the greater will be the accuracy of results, the chief characteristic of all scholarship. It was so kind of the Epigraphical Department that they have issued the IV, V and VI volumes of the South Indian Inscriptions in quick succession and scholars would indeed be greatly indebted to them if they speed up the publication of the rest of the