Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c5.s5.1

c5.s5.1

S. India had long been frequented by foreigners before the Europeans effected settlement there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries¹). Some of those early colonies still subsist, but the people while retaining more or less of their nationality have, however, lost the colloquial use of their own original tongues, and adopted S. Indian vernaculars which now are generally written with foreign characters. The most important of these foreign colonists are:—