Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c10.s2.2

c10.s2.2

There are fourteen Sanskrit-Canarese vowels (a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ṛi, ṝi, lṛi, lṝi, e, ai, o and au) and in Canarese e and o have both long and short forms. There are 34 Sanskrit-Canarese consonants classed (vargāxara) and unclassed (avargāxara), that is to say, the ordinary Sanskrit alphabet with xa; but of these aspirates are not used in Canarese, except in some peculiar cases. To these are added the peculiarly Canarese letters r̥, ḷ̥ and ḷ. The author then states (p. 44) that there are only 47 letters in pure Canarese—a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ĕ, ē, ai, ŏ, ō, au; k, kh, g, gh, ṅ, c, ch, j, jh, ń, ṭ, ṭh, ḍ, ḍh, ṇ, t, th, d, dh, n, p, ph, b, bh, m, y, r, l, v, s, h, x, r̥, ḷ̥, ḷ. The Sanskrit prepossessions of the author have induced him to include erroneously the aspirates and x; h is the modern representative of p. Rejecting these letters, therefore, the remainder represent very nearly the sounds we find really to exist in Tamil.