Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s16.t8: 2.16.8 Revised chronological scheme
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s16.t8
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2.16.8 Revised chronological scheme
c21.s16.t8.1
The chronological scheme adopted in this study has been somewhat simplified as follows.
c21.s16.t8.2
| Early Tamil-Brāhmī Period | : ca. 2nd century B.C. to 1st century A.D. |
| Late Tamil-Brāhmī Period | : ca 2nd to 4th centuries A.D. |
| Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu Period | : ca. 5th and 6th centuries A.D. |
c21.s16.t8.3
The present Corpus is arranged in an approximate chronological order as follows.
c21.s16.t8.4
| Early Tamil-Brāhmī Period | : *Inscriptions 1-59* |
| Late Tamil-Brāhmī Period | : *Inscriptions 60-89* |
| Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu Period | : *Inscriptions 101-121* |
c21.s16.t8.5
An attempt has also been made to determine the dates of the inscriptions century-wise rather than assign them to periods of two centuries each as in my earlier attempts (1968, 1992). The following two Tables (2.¹ & 2.²) arrange the inscriptions in chronological and alphabetical order respectively; Table 2.2 also includes data on the orthographic types (TB-I to III) of the inscriptions.
c21.s16.t8.6
¹ See section 6.12.
c21.s16.t8.7
² See sections 2.14, 6.14 to 6.19.