the journal was the chief source for European scholarship of accurate information regarding Indian Epigraphy. But about 1888 the Government of India decided to reproduce the Inscriptions of the country under its own officials, and an agreement was entered into in 1892, by which the Government Journal, the Epigraphia Indica, was published on the basis established by the Indian Antiquary as an official quarterly Supplement to that Journal. This agreement lasted twenty-eight years, till 1920, when it came to an end owing to another mutual agreement, and the Epigraphia Indica is now published directly by the Government. During the period it was a Supplement to the Indian Antiquary thirteen biennial volumes were produced, although it always continued to be a charge on the funds of the Journal.
The Indian Antiquary has throughout been conducted on an honorary basis. No one has ever been paid for a contribution or as an editor or as an assistant of the editors, while the proprietors have contributed annually towards the cost of the Journal, sometimes heavily, despite the assistance received from time to time, by way of subscription for copies, accorded by the Secretary of State for India, the Government of India and its subordinate Governments and by the Native Rulers.
The subjects with which the Journal has been principally concerned have been the Archaeology, Ethnology, Geography, History, Folklore, Languages, Literature, Numismatics, Philology, Philosophy and Religion of the Indian Empire, and, to a certain extent, of its surroundings. Notable, and in some cases epoch-making, contributions have been published on all these subjects, several of them having been preliminary studies of books subsequently well-known to Indian and Oriental students and even to general fame.
The Editors have been themselves among the largest individual contributors to the pages of the Indian Antiquary, but they have had the co-operation of many great Indian and Oriental scholars in India itself as well as all over Europe and in America. The list of contributors during the first fifty years reaches a total of 527, every one of whom has been an earnest student of things Indian, the great majority acquiring their knowledge at first hand. This long list contains many names that have become famous, or at any rate well and favourably known to those connected with Indian research. The names of the more important Orientalists and of those contributing the most notable articles are as follows : —
English and American.— Sir Clive Bayley, Sir James M. Campbell, Sir Alexander Cunningham, Sir Walter Elliot, Sir George Grierson, Sir Henry Howorth, Sir Denzil Ibbetson, Sir Charles Lyall, Sir William Maxwell, Sir Monier Monier-Williams, Sir Arthur Phayre, Sir Aurel Stein, Sir James Wilson, Sir Henry Yule ; Professors : J. Avery, V. Ball, C. Bendall, H. Blochman, Maurice Bloomfield, E. B. Cowell, E. Laumann, Max Muller,
