Thank you, Bankei, for this addition to my reading list. My first thoughts are the rarity of Pali inscriptions would be consistent with my claim that Pali was an oral tradition until about 100 BCE. I must read the book before saying more.

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Bankei <bankei@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Stefan
>
> Interesting stuff.
>
> If Pali was the language of the Buddha we could conclude that the majority
> of the early Buddhists would have used this language.
>
> It is therefore interesting to note that inscriptions in Pali are extremely
> rare in both India and early Sri Lanka, according to Richard Salomon in
> Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit,
> and the other Indo-Aryan Languages, Oxford University Press, 1998.
>
> Bankei
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>