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The study of written communication has come a long way, nearly 5,500 years from the Sumerian clay tablets to the World Wide Web. Some of the earliest traces of epigraphy in South Asia is found in Sri Lanka, dating to ca. the 4th century BCE.
Epigraphy derived from the Greek word: ἐπιγραφή (epigraphē), meaning "inscription"; is the study and analysis of inscriptions or epigraphs (engraved into stone or other durable materials, or cast in metal), the science of classifying them as to cultural context and period etc., analyzing them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them. A person studying this is called an epigrapher or epigraphist. Epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the "Auxiliary Sciences of History".
This site is a result of a Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka (RASSL) initiative to showcase Sri Lanka’s epigraphic heritage on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Goal
To build a web site that will serve as a repository of knowledge for the Inscriptions of Sri Lanka.
The intention is to build a suitable framework for a knowledge base that can be continuously improved and extended by a community of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) wishing to collaborate with the RASSL.
Approach
The web site will have one page for each inscription. These "inscription pages" will be the basic building blocks of this web site.
Each page will have
• An image of the Inscription
• Title of the Inscription (and/or Plate Number)
• Introduction/Brief Description/Location
• Transliteration & Translations
• Footnotes and cross references to the source pages.
The following items of information (whenever available) will be used to support indexing and searching.
• Location (based on the granularity of available data)
• Script (e.g. Brahmi, Early Sinhala, Medieval Sinhala etc.)
• Language (e.g. Singhalese, Sanskrit, Pali etc.)
• Period (e.g. 200BC, 100AD etc.)
• Type (e.g. Rock, Cave, Pillar, etc.)
Note: The source volumes may not contain all this data for a given inscription and as such there will be certain limitations and constraints when in comes to building search and indexing mechanisms for this site.
The link below provides a pictorial view of the infromation attributes of an inscription. http://www.lakdiva.net/rasdigital/pilot/Inscription-Attributes.html
Critical Success Factors
A multi-disciplinary approach is required for the success of this project. People with domain knowledge and expertise in epigraphy need to work closely with information technologists to build web sites like this.
There will be a limit to what the Information Technologists can contribute and accomplish. Once the basic foundation is built relevant Domain and Subject Matter Experts will need to invest time and effort to validate the accuracy of the content and to ensure that the information published is appropriate from a contextual perspective.
Once the core is built using the information available in the selected sources, it is essential that the community of SME’s take “ownership” of the site and add value by continually enhancing and augmenting this body of knowledge.
The sources used for this exercise may not contain information attributes such as the Height & Width of the inscription, style & size of the letters, distance between letters & lines, close up photographs etc. Although there will be no shortage of critics to point out what is missing, how many people will come forward and take the effort to add value by providing this information to enhance the knowledge base?
It is also hoped that modern collaboration mechanisms such as Blogs, Discussion Forums and Wiki’s (a Wikipedia like layer) will be used for the presentation of new findings for peer review and discussion.
Notes for site users and visitors
1. Some content on this site will require "Unicode Diacritic Fonts", namely Times Extended Roman (Click here to Download & Install the Font)
2. For the proper rendering of textual content in Sinhala, Tamil, Brahmi script etc., the relevant font sets will be required.
3. The Adobe Reader will be required to read the 
PDF documents available for download on this site.
