Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s1.5

c20.s1.5

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.