Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c8.s5.t3.1

c8.s5.t3.1

The series of the published datable Pallava inscriptions of the 8th century ends for the present with the Kaśākūḍi plates; and facsimiles of documents of the next following centuries [70] are not accessible to me. I am, therefore, unable to exactly fix the time when the third or transitional variety of the Grantha, BURNELL'S Coḷa or middle Grantha, came into use, which is found in the inscriptions from the reign of the Bāṇa king Vikramāditya¹ about A. D. 1150 (plate VIII, col. XIV) and of Sundara-Pāṇḍya,² A. D. 1250 (plate VIII, col. XV), as well as in other documents.³ It would however appear, both from the Grantha signs occurring in the Gaṅga inscriptions (plate VIII, cols. XI, XII) and from BURNELL'S Coḷa-Grantha alphabet of A. D. 1080,⁴ that the new developments originated partly towards the end of the 8th century and partly in the 9th and 10th, about the same time when the Old-Kanarese script (above, § 29, C) was formed.