Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s1.t5.3

c22.s1.t5.3

The Corpus comprises 110 inscriptions, 89 in Tamil-Brāhmī and 21 in Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu. There are 371 simple stems in the Corpus; 256 stems are Dravidian, 101 stems are Indo-Aryan, and the remaining 14 are of doubtful etymology.⁷ Taking the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions (Nos. *1-89*) alone into account, there are 307 stems out of which 213 stems are Dravidian, 81 stems are Indo-Aryan, and the remaining 13 are of doubtful etymology. In brief, the proportion of Dravidian: Indo-Aryan in the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions has increased dramatically from less than 1:1 as computed by Zvelebil in 1964 to more than 2.5:1 at present; only about one-fourth (in numbers as well as frequency) of the simple stems in the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions in the Corpus are of Indo-Aryan origin. It is significant that the proportion remains about the same even when the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions in the Corpus are included. These findings disprove the earlier view that the language of the cave inscriptions is a 'hybrid jargon' dominated by Indo-Aryan.