Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c5.9

c5.9

three dynasties, the Cālukya of Kalyāṇapura in the Deccan, to a as yet nameless dynasty which ruled the country (Veṅgi) between the Kṛishṇā and Godāvarī before the middle of the seventh century A. D., and to the Cera dynasties which ruled the modern Mysore, Salem, Coimbatore and part of the Malabar Coast. These three classes of inscriptions present alphabets which, though well marked, are merely varieties of the Cave character, and it is, therefore, impossible to suppose that the civilization now prevailing in S. India but which took its rise in the North originally can really have commenced to work on the South before the earlier centuries of the present era. In the tenth and eleventh centuries northern influences commenced again to prevail in parts of the Deccan, and introduced the Devanāgarī alphabet which has there assumed forms peculiar to the South of India.