Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s4.t5.3

c21.s4.t5.3

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.