Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s2.8

c21.s2.8

This very first attempt to read a cave inscription illustrates a major difficulty, namely, that even if the characters are read correctly with values as in the Brāhmī script, the text turns out to be unintelligible. It is interesting that Venkayya did not consider the possibility that the text, or at least part of it, could be in Tamil, the local language.⁴ In any case, Venkayya did not take his own reading too seriously and admitted that "we must wait for more allied inscriptions in good preservation before we can be sure about their interpretation".⁵