Indian Palaeography c15.s9.t3.4.3

c15.s9.t3.4.3

(ii) henceforward drops its square head-marks, but its other features are continued and further developed in the stone inscriptions of Kāñchī, Mamallapuram and Trichinopoly, and also in the copper plates of later Pallava kings. The proto-Kannadi script is an extraneous writing and its presence here is inexplicable. (ii) also leads on to the development of the Grantha and Tamil characters. This palaeographical analysis does not fit in with the genealogical tables built up by the historians who have tried to reconcile the long genealogies given in the later records of the Pallavas with the fragmentary information contained in the earlier plates. The main difficulty is raised by the plates in proto-Kannadi script. Krishnasastri was the first to suggest a solution. He believed that the Omgodu grant no. 2 ‘must have been a copy of a grant of the 5th–6th century a.d., put into writing in the 7th century’.³ D. C. Sircar followed in his footsteps and similarly asked: ‘What is the objection if we think that the Narasaraopet grant was also an early inscription likewise copied about the same time?'¹ If we follow this argument, we have to say the same thing about the Udayandiram plates of Nandivarman, but this question has somehow been missed by D. C. Sircar.² It must be pointed out that the theory of the official adoption of the proto-Kannaḍi style in this region in the early eighth century a.d.