Let (M, g) be an N-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold without boundary. When m is a positive integer strictly smaller than N, we prove thatwhere u m,N/m is the usual Sobolev norm of u ∈ W m,N/m (M), and α N,m is the best constant in Adams' original inequality (Ann. Math., 1988). This is a modified version of Adams' inequality on compact Riemannian manifold which has been proved by L. Fontana (Comment. Math Helv., 1993). Using the above inequality in the case when m = 1, we establish sufficient conditions under which the quasilinear equationhas a nontrivial positive weak solution in