Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s16.t7: 2.16.7 Linguistic evidence
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s16.t7
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2.16.7 Linguistic evidence
c21.s16.t7.1
Early Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions have many archaic lexical items (e.g., *antai* as a free word) and rare grammatical usages (e.g., *-a* as the genitive suffix) which are not found in the Late Period. Causative verb forms are more frequent in the Early Period, rare in the Late Period and absent in the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions. The causative suffix *-(p)pi-* is much more frequent than *-vi-* in the Early Period. By about the 5th century A.D., that is, from the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu Period, Sanskrit supplants Prakrit as the source of loanwords from Indo-Aryan (e.g., *irācar* < *rājan*). The presence of archaic linguistic features indicates an earlier date which is generally corroborated by palaeographic evidence.³
c21.s16.t7.2
³ See sections 3.2.2 (v) and 3.2.3 (vi).