Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s2.t2.13

c20.s2.t2.13

The rediscovery of the Edakal cave inscriptions came about accidentally. I was attending a seminar on epigraphy held in March 1995 in the University of Kerala at Thiruvananthapuram. There I saw exhibited enlarged photographs of Hultzsch's 1897 estampages of the Edakal inscriptions (taken from the 1985 reprint of *Indian Antiquary*, vol. XXX). None of the epigraphists from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu who were participating in the seminar had heard of these inscriptions. The photographs clearly showed that two of the inscriptions were in the Tamil-Brāhmī script of ca. 3rd century a.d. Both commence with the Tamil word *kō* 'king, chieftain' and one of them ends with the alveolar *ṉ* available only in Tamil-Brāhmī.¹