Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.s2.1

c10.s2.1

The Hindu civilization of the Canarese country is quite as old as that of the Tamil people, but the earliest traces we find of writing are in a modified form of the Açoka character, and the orthography, with a few unimportant exceptions and allowing for the obsolete form of the letters, is just what we find now. About the tenth century A. D. Canarese grammar was treated on the principles of the Sanskrit grammarians of the Aindra school[^1), and with steady reference to Sanskrit phonetics; the author of the Canarese Grammar “Çabdamaṇidarpaṇa” evidently considered the alphabet he used as a mere adaptation from the Sanskrit, and he was perfectly right in doing so. His account is as follows[^2):