Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s4.t6: 2.4.6 Assessment of Subrahmanya Aiyer's work

c21.s4.t6.1

Notwithstanding the errors in Subrahmanya Aiyer's readings of individual inscriptions, which have been corrected by later research, his basic findings on the phonological structure of the script and nature of the language of the cave inscriptions have remained intact. They have provided the secure foundation for further work which has revealed that the cave inscriptions turn out to be in simple and intelligible Tamil when read with proper values for characters and with appropriate orthographic conventions.