Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c21.s9.4

c21.s9.4

In spite of these advantages, Mahalingam's readings and interpretations are disappointing. The failure is almost certainly due to his reliance on photographs of estampages and his apparent omission to check the readings *in situ*.¹ Had he done so, he could not have missed the longest Pāṇṭiya and Cēra inscriptions respectively at Mangulam and Pugalur not included in his book; ² he would have also avoided the mix-up of estampages at Mangulam, the incorrect order of reading the inscriptions at Kongarpuliyankulam and Mettuppatti ³ and quite a few incorrect readings (like *ṭ* for *ṟ* and *ṭh* for *ḻ*).⁴ Following Subramanian, Mahalingam also claimed to have found the presence of two strokes attached to consonants to indicate the *-ā* medial vowel in two of the inscriptions edited by him.⁵ This claim is also not borne out by actual evidence *in situ*.⁶