Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s5: 2.5 A comic interlude
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s5
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2.5 A comic interlude
c21.s5.1
Fifteen years after Subrahmanya Aiyer's path-breaking study appeared, Narayana Rao made an unsuccessful effort to put the clock back.⁴ Basing himself wholly on Krishna Sastri's readings, Narayana Rao argued that since all known inscriptions in the Brāhmī script were in Prakrit, the cave inscriptions in this script in the Tamil country must also be in the same language. He suggested that these inscriptions were in "a form of Prākṛit described by the Prākṛit grammarians as Paiśācī".⁵ According to him, "the Pāṇḍya country ... is a tract where the prevailing language is Paiśācī".⁶ To prove his thesis, he tortured Krishna Sastri's readings to make them yield texts supposedly in Prakrit, getting his clue from the *-nā* (*>-nāṁ*) ending suggested by Krishna Sastri for many of the inscriptions. For example, the long inscription at Mangulam read by Krishna Sastri and Subrahmanya Aiyer becomes (in the Sanskritised version by Narayana Rao):⁷
c21.s5.2
⁴ C. Narayana Rao 1938-39: pp. 362-376 (=CNR).
c21.s5.3
⁵ Ibid. p. 376.
c21.s5.4
⁶ Ibid.
c21.s5.5
⁷ Ibid. No. IV A at p. 368.
c21.s5.6
*gaṇakānām nāthā(nām) Śrī-yakshāṇām dharmam;*
*idha (itaḥ) nartinām sārthavāhakānām*
*Simhaḷānām śrēshṭhikānām dāna-dēyam;*
*śrēshṭhikānām caitya-pālikā.*
c21.s5.7
Narayana Rao's criticism of Subrahmanya Aiyer's work can, with better justification, be applied to his own readings:¹
c21.s5.8
¹ C. Narayana Rao 1938-39: p. 376.
c21.s5.9
Mr. Subrahmanya Aiyar made a mess of the whole lot of the inscriptions acting on the wrong lead given by Mr. Krishna Sastri concerning the existence of Tamil words. For his purpose of making them appear as complete Tamil records, he took undue and unwarranted liberty with them; he cut off vowels as well as consonants, added others, twisted some more, made wrong grouping of the letters, tried to force meanings into the words he had created, and when he failed to draw any sense out of them, as very often he could not draw, he was satisfied with saying that they are all proper names of persons or places.
c21.s5.10
The unsound attempt by Narayana Rao was not taken seriously by anyone else and it has now sunk into wholly deserved oblivion.