Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c11.9

c11.9

Admitting then that Kaliṅga extended even into the Tamiḻ country¹, it is possible to look there for the type of character which represents the original of the Djamboe inscription, and, in fact, the earliest Pallava character suits this purpose even better than that used in Veṅgi. The two (as I have already said²) do not differ sufficiently to constitute separate varieties of the developments of the ‘Cave’ character, though the writing of the earliest Pallava inscriptions presents some slight, yet peculiar, variations. These are: 1) the tendency to put a round dot at the top of the strokes which end vertically, where the Veṅgi has an angular mark (p. 17); 2) the letters in the Pallava character are slightly more round than those of the Veṅgi; 3) the letters are less regularly formed in the last than in the former.