Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s1.t2: 3.1.2 How much Tamil?
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s1.t2
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3.1.2 How much Tamil?
c22.s1.t2.1
Before we look at the problem of the quality of the language of the cave inscriptions, it will be instructive to examine quantitatively the presence of Tamil and Prakrit in it.
c22.s1.t2.2
To the meagre number of four or five Tamil words already recognised by Krishna Sastri, Subrahmanya Aiyer could add only a dozen more—surprisingly few, considering the major paradigm shift effected by his own study (Table 3.¹).
c22.s1.t2.3
Tamil words in the cave inscriptions as read by -
c22.s1.t2.4
Krishna Sastri (1919):²
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² H. Krishna Sastri 1919:p. 346.
c22.s1.t2.6
| -*uṭai* #, *ūr*, *ēri*, *kuṭu-* / *koṭu-*, *nāṭu* | 5 |
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\# Incorrectly read.
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Subrahmanya Aiyer (1924):³
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³ K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1924:pp. 287-299.
c22.s1.t2.10
| *itā*, *iva*, *iḷa-* *uṟai*, *kunṟa-* *ceytā(ṉ)*, *tantai*, | |
| *neṭu-*, *pāḷi*, *piṟantā(ṉ)*, *makaṉ*, *vēṇ* | 12 |
c22.s1.t2.11
List of additional words only.
c22.s1.t2.12
| Total | 17 |
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Table 3.¹. Earliest readings of Tamil words in cave inscriptions (up to 1924).
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¹ Kamil Zvelebil 1966:pp. 18-19.
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Kamil Zvelebil compiled a glossary of simple stems occurring in the inscriptions as read by him and computed the relative frequency of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan as follows:¹
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¹ Kamil Zvelebil 1966: p. 41; see also Index Verborum at pp. 36-41.
c22.s1.t2.17
| Language | Stems |
| Dravidian | 43 |
| Indo-Aryan | 47 |
| Unknown | 33 |
| Total | †123 |
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(† Including 6 Dr. and 6 IA additional stems from the later Sittannavasal II inscriptions, which, however, do not materially alter the picture.)
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Zvelebil reached the following conclusion on the basis of the statistical data compiled by him:
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The ratio of 47: 43 for IA: Dr. entitles us fully to characterize the language of the records under scrutiny as a hybridized form of language. The grammar of the inscriptions is, however, fully Tamil . . . This, as well as the distribution of lexical items, shows that the language of the records has rightly been characterized as hybrid Tamil. ²
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² Ibid. p. 42.