Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s1: 2.1 Introduction
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s1
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2.1 Introduction
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The term 'decipherment' is generally employed to denote the successful reading and understanding of an unknown script in a language which is, to begin with, unknown. It may, therefore, appear *prima facie* inapt to apply the term to the reading and interpretation of the earliest cave inscriptions in the Tamil country, as neither the script (Brāhmī) nor the languages likely to be involved (Prakrit and Tamil) can be described as 'unknown'. However, the fact remains that when the cave inscriptions were discovered, they were found to be wholly unintelligible, and it took the combined labours of several scholars for well over half a century before the inscriptions could be understood.
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The following are the main stages by which the cave inscriptions became progressively more intelligible.
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(1) Determination of the true phonological character of the script, which ruled out Indo-Aryan as the language of the inscriptions.¹
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¹ K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1924.
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(2) Identification of the special Tamil characters *ḻ*, *ḷ*, *ṟ* and *ṉ* in the script.²
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² *ḻ* by H. Krishna Sastri (1919) and the rest by K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer (1924).
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(3) Discovery that the cave inscriptions followed orthographic conventions different from those of the Mauryan Brāhmī, but related to the Bhattiprolu casket inscriptions.³
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³ T.N. Subramanian 1938 and 1957. T.V. Mahalingam 1967. I. Mahadevan 1968 and 1971.
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(4) Study of the cave inscriptions *in situ* and editing them direct from the stone.⁴
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⁴ I. Mahadevan, *Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966* (1968) with further improvements in this volume.
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The whole process can be truly described as 'decipherment' as it revolutionised our understanding of the script and the language of the inscriptions and led to fresh insight into the origin and evolution of Tamil writing systems.
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This chapter is a brief chronological account of the decipherment of the Tamil-Brāhmī script. The results of the decipherment relating to the language and contents of the inscriptions are presented respectively in the next two chapters.