Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s4.1

c21.s4.1

The paper by Subrahmanya Aiyer presented at the Third Oriental Conference held at Madras (Chennai) is the breakthrough leading to an understanding of the real nature of the script and language of the Tamil cave inscriptions.⁸ In this paper, he presented his readings and interpretations of 30 inscriptions from 12 sites. While his readings of individual inscriptions are not without problems as we shall see presently, his elucidation of the phonological structure of the script, crucial identification of the special characters for the Tamil sounds *ḻ*, *ṟ* and *ṉ*, and his demonstration that the language of the cave inscriptions is basically Old Tamil with an admixture of Prakrit loanwords have remained valid and constitute the real point of departure for all further work in the field.