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Preface In October 2017, an international symposium was held in Paris as a tribute to Noboru Karashima who gave a new impetus to the study of South Indian and Tamil epigraphy. The contributions to this volume illustrate the wide range of related topics in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy and history of art that were presented at the symposium. These domains, an integral part of classical studies, have generally been considered as distinct areas of research, however nobody can deny their mutual interdependence. The title of this volume 'Whispering of Inscriptions' is borrowed from one of Karashima's publications. Karashima, who himself was convinced of 'the importance of epigraphy in the task of historical reconstruction, ' had 'noticed a defect in past studies in the field of socio-economic history, due to the arbitrary use of epigraphic evidence.'3 Karashima was of the view that historians should avoid arbitrary judgements and concluded his essay by saying: 'In sum, scholars of ancient and medieval South Indian history should be acquainted with inscriptions and listen honestly to their whisperings.' [...] This volume witnesses this very challenge of contextualization of epigraphic and iconographic data. It contains a variety of contributions demonstrating the richness and diversity of contemporary research on South Indian temple inscriptions and copper plate charts as well as on art and archaeology. During the last decade, the field of South Indian epigraphy and archaeology has come up with important findings which has brought in unprecedented data shedding new light in the area of historical studies, particularly of South India. These essays attempt to highlight some of these discoveries and to update the epigraphical and archaeological resource materials. They are intended to stimulate discussion and analysis in a multidisciplinary perspective, through new and divergent theoretical and methodological conceptions, and to broaden our perception of the early and mediaeval South Indian societies. Each one is original in its approach to the South Indian inscriptions, monuments and images and relates to a particular domain of South Indian history.

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Edith PARLIER-RENAULT is professor of South and South Asian art history at Sorbonne Universite and director of the Centre de recherches sur l'Extreme-Orient a Paris-Sorbonne (CREOPS, Paris-Sorbonne Research center on the Far East). Her main area of interest is Hindu iconography. She published a book on Deccan and South Indian temples between the 6th and the 8th centuries (Temples de l'Inde meridionale: la mise en scene des mythes, PUPS, Paris, 2006) and a general introduction to Indian Art (L'Art indien: Inde, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Asie du Sud-Est, PUPS, Paris, 2010), as well as several articles on Hindu and Buddhist sculpture. Appasamy MURUGAIYAN received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Paris 7 (1980). He has specialised in foreign language teaching methodologies, Modern Tamil and Comparative Dravidian linguistics, Tamil epigraphy and the Tamil diasporic studies. He taught in several Universities: Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, University of Paris 8, School of Oriental Languages and CREOPS-Sorbonne University. He has published and edited several books and published widely in international journals and chapters in books on modern and historical Tamil linguistics, Tamil epigraphy and Tamil diaspora. His current areas of research include Tamil epigraphy, Tamil historical linguistics and identity construction among the Tamil diaspora of Francophone islands. He has completed two digital archival projects of preservation of manuscripts (17th-18th centuries) from the Bishop's House of Jaffna funded by the Endangered Archival Programme of the British library. He is currently building a grammatical and lexical database of Tamil inscriptions, jointly organised by the Tamil Virtual Academy and CNRS-Mondes iranien et indien, Paris. He has been organising the International Workshop on Tamil Epigraphy since 2004.

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