Second edition of ‘Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh’ released

Discover the history of inscriptions in Andhra Pradesh with insights from Prof. Somasundara Rao's latest book release.

The second edition of the book Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh, written by C. Somasundara Rao, former Professor of the Department of History and Archaeology, Andhra University, was released by A. Prasanna Kumar, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies(CPS), at the Visakhapatnam Public Library, here, on Sunday.

Prof. Somasundara Rao said that his guru, Mallampalli Somasekhara Sarma (Andhra University), was an authority on deciphering inscriptions but had not written books on the subject. The first edition of the book was published in 2014 and was also released at the same library. He said that Brahmi script was the basis of most south Indian languages while Nagari script, which came to be known as Deva Nagari later, was the basis of Sanskrit and other north Indian languages.

The changes in the script were made during different dynasties like Satavahana and Ishkavakus. The Telugu and Kannada scripts, which were almost identical before the 14th and 15th centuries, had witnessed changes during the later period.

Prof Somasundara Rao said that Varahamihira introduced a numerical system to represent different words. “I analysed the numbers and words,” he said, opining that the book would be useful to students and researchers.