And quite frequently I had to rely on them totally when the stone was impossible to read. A full annotated bibliography of these sources follows this introduction. Brackets in the records that follow serve two purposes. First, I have enclosed any letters, numbers, or words that I could not read in brackets. Second, any comments I had to make on any given stone are enclosed in brackets and follow the record of the inscription.
Many stones have a verse, usually religiously oriented, following the actual inscription.
Where this is the case I have enclosed the verse in quotation marks. Many of the previous compilers did not record verses so quite often I had nothing to go on while trying to decipher them. Where there is a verse, but it is illegible, I have said so. In such a case the verse would probably be readable by anyone sufficiently motivated to figure it out, perhaps using a rubbing technique. For the purposes of this record, however, I did not go to such lengths.