Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s3.t1.1

c21.s3.t1.1

Krishna Sastri noted for the first time the "purely southern characteristic" of the palaeography of the cave inscriptions comparing them with those of the Brāhmī inscriptions of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).⁵ The comparison was fruitful as it enabled him to identify the occurrence of the Dravidian *ḻ* in the Tamil cave inscriptions based on the earlier discovery of this character by Parker in the Brāhmī inscriptions of Sri Lanka.⁶ From the same source, he also identified *ī* which occurs earlier in the Tamil cave inscriptions when compared with the Brāhmī inscriptions elsewhere in the country.⁷ This was a valuable contribution by Krishna Sastri to the study of the Tamil-Brāhmī script. He also noticed the occurrence of three other unusual characters in the script which, however, he could not identify.⁸ Later, Subrahmanya Aiyer correctly identified them as the special Tamil characters for *l*, *r* and *ṉ*.⁹