Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s17: 4.14 Introduction

c23.s17.1

The early Tamil inscriptions included in the Corpus are primarily votive records and are very brief, containing mostly only the personal names and titles of donors and recipients of cave shelters. Inscriptions on objects like pottery, coins, seals and rings are even more brief. Nevertheless, they do provide incidental but valuable information on the state of the early Tamil society. A brief summary of the available information is given below under different heads. For further discussion, the relevant entries in the Commentary may be referred to with the help of the Inscriptional Glossary.