Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s1.1

c21.s1.1

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.