Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c5.s3.16

c5.s3.16

There is another peculiarity in the Vaṭṭeḻuttu system of writing, which might appear also common to the early Prakṛit (Cave) inscriptions in India, and to those of Ceylon; but there is, in reality, a difference. This peculiarity consists in the writing of consonants which follow one another without the intervention of a vowel, on the same line, not perpendicularly, as is done in the other Indian alphabets. Instances of this occur in the Vaṭṭeḻuttu documents in numbers in every line, and it is the chief feature in this system as compared with those of the other Indian alphabets. In the Cave inscriptions this practice does not really exist; the duplicated letters (which constitute the bulk of the instances of consonants directly following one another) are either not marked, or marked by a **o**²). In the Ceylon inscriptions, the practice is to omit reduplicated letters, and instances of the Sanskrit system occur³).