Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s3.1

c20.s3.1

The cave inscriptions at Mettuppatti,¹⁰ a village 40 km. north-west of Madurai, were first reported by Francis in 1906. In the same year, L.A. Cammiade, a Deputy Collector, discovered a cave inscription at Marukaltalai¹ near Tirunelveli and Subrahmanya Aiyer discovered another at Anaimalai² near Madurai. The cave inscriptions at Mangulam³ and Mettuppatti⁴ were rediscovered by Subrahmanya Aiyer in 1906 and Venkayya in 1908 respectively. Unlike at Edakal and Kilavalavu, the newly discovered cave inscriptions were immediately recognised as written in the Brāhmī script.⁵ The unexpected occurrence of Brāhmī inscriptions in the Tamil country aroused great interest and, as a result of vigorous search, no less than 39 inscriptions from 12 caves were found in quick succession from the southern Districts of Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Tirunelveli.⁶ The list of inscriptions copied each year was published in the *ARE*⁷ along with description of the caves and other interesting features associated with them.⁸ During this period, photographs of estampages of most of the cave inscriptions discovered up to 1918 were also published in the *ARE* from time to time.⁹ Among the inscriptions discovered during this extraordinarily productive period,¹⁰ the most significant ones are, besides the two Pāṇṭiya inscriptions from Mangulam mentioned earlier, those from Alagarmalai which record the gifts of merchants from Madurai and another from Sittannavasal providing interesting evidence for early contacts with the Jainas of Karnataka.