Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s14.t1: 1.13.1 Introduction
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s14.t1
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1.13.1 Introduction
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Until almost the middle of the last century, cave inscriptions were the only records known in the Tamil-Brāhmī script. This circumstance gave rise to the presumption that Tamil-Brāhmī was employed by the Buddhist or Jaina monks who came from outside the Tamil country and were not quite conversant with the local language. It implied that Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions did not represent the standard or the spoken Tamil of the day. All this changed with the discovery of pottery inscriptions first at Arikamedu between 1941-44 and later from many more ancient sites spread all over the Tamil country. At present, there are 20 sites, 14 of them excavated and the remaining explored, which have yielded hundreds of pottery inscriptions in Tamil written in the Tamil-Brāhmī script (Table 1.⁴, Map II).¹ The inscriptions have been dated by various methods including stratigraphy, associated artefacts and palaeographic evidence from ca. 2nd century B.C. to 3rd century A.D. The practice of writing on pottery seems to have been given up by about the end of the 3rd century A.D.
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¹ See S. Rajavelu and G. Thirumoorthy 1995 for a succint account of sites and excavations.
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Yet another dimension to the study of Tamil-Brāhmī has been added with the discovery of pottery inscriptions from sites outside the Tamil country as at Salihundam (Andhra Pradesh), Jaffna (Sri Lanka) and the ancient ports on the Red Sea coast of Egypt (Quseir al-Qadim and Berenike).
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While pottery inscriptions are fragmentary when compared to cave inscriptions, they are, in general, more securely dated and provide a glimpse into the secular character of ancient Tamil society. I shall argue in a later chapter that pottery inscriptions indicate widespread literacy in all strata of the Tamil society in the Tamil-Brāhmī period.²
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² See section 4.24 on literacy in early Tamil society.
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Select pottery inscriptions from various sites are illustrated in Figs. 1.19 to 1.21. A catalogue of these inscriptions with readings and references to sources is appended in Table 1.5.