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Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s1: 1.1 Introduction

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s1

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English

1.1 Introduction

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Until the commencement of the 20th century the earliest known inscriptions in Tamil were those of the Pallavas in the Tamil script from the 7th century and those of the Pāṇṭiyas in the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script from the 8th century A.D.² The existence of two scripts for the language was a puzzle, though their ultimate descent from the Brāhmī script could be inferred by comparative studies.³ Even more puzzling was the complete absence of earlier written records in Tamil, even though the earliest literary works pictured a great civilisation going back at least two thousand years.⁴ These puzzles were resolved only when the cave inscriptions in Tamil in a script closely resembling that of the Asokan edicts were discovered in the southern districts of Tamil Nadu around the turn of the 20th century.

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² T.N. Subramanian 1938 (1996 reprint): p. 19; 1957: p. 1505.

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³ T.A. Gopinatha Rao 1908, TAS. I (1988 reprint): pp. 299-344, 395-431. T.N. Subramanian 1938 (1996 reprint): Tables. C. Sivaramamurti 1952: charts.

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⁴ The editions of U.Ve. Swaminathaiyar of the earliest Tamil literary works of the Caṅkam Age began to appear from 1887. The historical data contained in works like *Puṟanāṉūṟu* (1894) and *Patiṟṟuppattu* (1904) opened up a new world and led to a radical reassessment of the antiquity and historicity of early Tamil civilisation.

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Subrahmanya Aiyer's classic paper of 1924, which laid the foundation for what we now call Tamil-Brāhmī epigraphy, begins with a survey of the cave inscriptions discovered up to that time.⁵ His listing, though in chronological order, begins not with the earliest discoveries at Mangulam (1882) or Edakal (1894) or even Kilavalavu (1903) by one of his colleagues, but with Marukaltalai (1906), the fourth of the caves to be discovered with similar inscriptions, apparently because this was the first site where the script was recognised as Brāhmī closely resembling the Asokan alphabet. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now make a chronological survey of the discoveries of the cave inscriptions from the beginning and up to the end of the 20th century. The uneven course of discoveries, sometimes coming up fast with heightened excitement and at other times slowing down with waning interest, may be studied in five stages.

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⁵ K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1924: pp. 275-278.

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(1) Earliest discoveries (1882-1903).
(2) A flood of discoveries (1906-1918).
(3) Waning interest and random discoveries (1926-1952).
(4) Revival of interest: fresh copying of inscriptions (1961-80).
(5) Recent discoveries (1981-2000).

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I have discussed the more important discoveries in each period in somewhat greater detail, bringing up the story to the present, anticipating the process of decipherment dealt with in the next chapter. As the Corpus of inscriptions, which forms the core of the present study, includes some Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions in order to link Tamil-Brāhmī with the later script, I have added some particulars of the discovery and significance of these inscriptions grouping them thematically.

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While the present study is confined to inscriptions on stone, it is also necessary to have some idea of the contemporary Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions on pottery and other inscribed objects like coins, seals and rings in order to have a more complete picture of early Tamil society. These inscriptions are briefly described in the Annexure to this chapter.

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