Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c22.s3.t5.6

c22.s3.t5.6

The causes of the abrupt dialectal shift from east to west undoubtedly lie in political and historical developments, that is, the decline of Magadha as the center of power in northern India after the collapse of the Mauryan empire and the movement of the center of political power in the following centuries toward the west and northwest. Like the eastern dialect under Aśoka, the central-western dialect of the post-Mauryan era was used far beyond what must have been its original homeland. Thus we find inscriptions in this standard epigraphic Prakrit as far afield as Orissa in the east, for instance, in the Hāthīgumphā inscription, while