Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c4.17

c4.17

Mr. E. Thomas[^2) ]has lately propounded a theory that the Southern Açoka alphabet is originally Dravidian, and then adapted to the N. Indian languages. This could only be the case if we assume the Vaṭṭeḷuttu to be the prototype, but as this is an imperfect expression of the Dravidian sound-system[^3) ], it cannot be an indigenous invention, and the theory presents many other objections. One insuperable difficulty is the entire absence of traces of any alphabet having existed in S. India before the Vaṭṭeḷuttu, and that all written monuments now known to exist prove a gradual invasion of the South by Buddhist and Brahmanical civilizations which brought more complete alphabets (derived from the Southern Açoka character) with them in historic times, and meeting the old Tamiḻ alphabet or Vaṭṭeḷuttu gradually supplanted it. It is especially remarkable that this last never had separate signs for the sonant letters (g etc.) which must have existed if Mr. Thomas's theory is correct, but though as I shall afterwards prove, the Tamiḷ language had these sounds in the third century after our era, the earliest monuments do not exhibit any marks or letters for them.