Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s12: 2.12 Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966 (1968)

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s12

Language: English

2.12 Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966 (1968)

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A corpus of the cave inscriptions discovered up to the time comprising 74 Tamil-Brāhmī and 2 Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions from 21 sites was compiled by me in 1966 based on the following principles.

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(1) Each inscription was read and edited direct from the stone.¹
(2) The inscriptions were arranged chronologically based on palaeographic, orthographic and linguistic evidence as follows.
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¹ Except IM No. 68/1966 at Tiruchirapalli-A (No. **78** in the present Corpus) which is no longer extant.

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(3) The following rules of orthography for the notation of medial vowels were formulated and rigorously applied to the reading and interpretation of the texts.
> (a) *Earlier period*
>> (i) A consonantal symbol unaccompanied by a medial vowel sign represents the basic consonant only.
>> (ii) The medial *-a* and *-ā* vowels are indicated by the same sign and can be distinguished only from the linguistic context.
>> (iii) The special *-ā* medial sign of the Bhattiprolu script is not found in the cave inscriptions.
> (b) *Later period*
>> (i) A consonantal symbol is treated either as basic or with the 'inherent' medial *-a* depending on the linguistic context.
>> (ii) The *puḷḷi* does not occur in the cave inscriptions.²
>> (iii) The top horizontal stroke attached to a consonant represents the medial *-ā* only.

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² I had earlier failed to notice the occurrence of the *puḷḷi* in the Anaimalai and Arachalur cave inscriptions. The orthographic scheme was modified later to accommodate the *puḷḷi*.

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The *Corpus* was presented (as a pre-printed monograph) at the Seminar on Inscriptions held in Madras in 1966 and included in the Proceedings of the Seminar published in 1968.³ The paper is illustrated with tracings of 46 selected inscriptions. A companion paper explaining the results of the revised readings in the *Corpus* was presented at the Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies held in Madras in January 1968.¹ The revised readings have been widely accepted and form the basis for much of the later work in the field.

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³ I. Mahadevan, *Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966*; (also in) R. Nagaswamy 1968 (ed.) *Seminar on inscriptions 1966*: pp. 57-73 (=IM 1966).

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¹ I. Mahadevan 1971: pp. 73-106. The discussion on the paper (pp. 104-106) was centred on the finding that "Tamil became a written language for the first time in about 2nd cent. B.C. by the adaptation of the Brāhmī script to the Tamil phonetic system" (p. 94).