Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c20.s8.t6.16

c20.s8.t6.16

As mentioned earlier, among the cave inscriptions at Edakal, Kerala, discovered by Fawcett in 1894 and copied by Hultzsch in 1897, there are two Tamil inscriptions in the Early Vaṭṭeluttu script of ca. 5th century a.d.⁴ Hultzsch made two attempts to read one of the inscriptions, but neither was wholly successful.⁵ He declared that the other inscription was "unintelligible" to him.⁶ Both inscriptions, engraved in bold characters and still in an excellent state of preservation, were copied and deciphered by our team which visited the site twice during 1995-96.⁷