Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s5.1

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