Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s4.t5: 2.4.5 Problems with Subrahmanya Aiyer's readings

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s4.t5

Language: English

2.4.5 Problems with Subrahmanya Aiyer's readings

c21.s4.t5.1

A study of Subrahmanya Aiyer's work reveals that in spite of the correct premises he proceeded from, his readings were often less than successful mainly on account of the following reasons.

Subrahmanya Aiyer was aware that the orthographic conventions relating to medial vowels in the Tamil cave inscriptions were different from those of the Asokan Brāhmī script. He refers to the Bhattiprolu casket inscriptions and actually cites Bühler's crucial discovery that "the medial short *-a* is indicated in the Southern Mauryan script by the addition of a horizontal stroke to the top of the consonant, which denotes the long *-ā* in Mauryan", but rejects its application to the cave inscriptions on the ground that "the addition of the horizontal stroke without any further change represents the long *-ā* in the Pāṇḍyan inscriptions".¹ Subrahmanya Aiyer's alternative suggestion that there is "unnecessary lengthening of penultimate short consonants (read syllables) in some words"² is not supported even by his own readings; e.g., *sālākāṇa* > *sālakaṇ*, where the last two vowels are 'lengthened'. The simpler solution that, unlike at Bhattiprolu, the medial stroke represented both *-a* and *-ā* according to the context in the cave inscriptions did not occur to him.

c21.s4.t5.4

¹ K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1924: p. 283.

c21.s4.t5.5

² Ibid.p. 286.

c21.s4.t5.6

(b) *Overestimating the Prakrit element

c21.s4.t5.7

According to Subrahmanya Aiyer, "a large number of Sanskrit words in their Prākṛit forms" occur in these records.³ Later studies have shown that he tended to overestimate the presence of the Indo-Aryan element in these records, though not perhaps to the same extent as was done by Krishna Sastri. Many of the so-called Prakrit words turn out to be due to incorrect reading. For example, out of the fifteen words listed by Subrahmanya Aiyer in their Sanskrit form to illustrate his point, about half the number do not in fact occur in the inscriptions read by him.⁴

c21.s4.t5.8

³ Ibid.

c21.s4.t5.9

⁴ Ibid. *karaṇi*, *kārita*, *kula*, *caitya*, *putra*, *yaksha* and *vatsa* in this list are the result of misread words.

c21.s4.t5.10

c21.s4.t5.11

Even though Subrahmanya Aiyer discovered many of the cave inscriptions and had seen most others *in situ*, he appears to have edited the inscriptions for publication relying on unsatisfactory estampages of weather-worn inscriptions. Otherwise, the mixing up of estampages at Mangulam and the incorrect sequence of reading the inscriptions at Kongarpuliyankulam, Vikkiramangalam and Mettuppatti could not have happened.⁵ I have no doubt that direct editing from the stone would have produced more accurate texts in most cases.

c21.s4.t5.12

⁵ See notes on locus in Nos. **3**, **12**, **13**, **21**, **27** and **28**. K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer himself states that his interpretations are based "mostly on the three plates given by Mr. Krishna Sastri" (1924: p. 282).

c21.s4.t5.13

(d) *Some 'strange' readings

c21.s4.t5.14

The cumulative effect of the problems discussed above has been to produce some strange readings as the examples given below show. (The upper lines in normal type reproduce Subrahmanya Aiyer's readings, while the lower lines in italics are the corresponding texts in the present Corpus).

c21.s4.t5.15

(1) **veḷ aḍaiy nikāmatāko potir yakāsīti kāaritāva . . .**¹
***veḷ-aṟai-y nikamatu kāviti-iy kāḷitika antai . . .***

(2) **ūpācāa pōta neṭula vōccō koṭu paḷiī.**²
***upaca-aṉ toṇṭi=lavōṉ koṭu paḷi-i.***

(3) **kuṭu koṭālaku itātāviṇ ceṭu atāṉ lēṇ.**³
***kuṟu koṭalku ittavaṉ ceṟ-ataṉ-ōṉ.***