Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s27.t4.13

c23.s27.t4.13

The Tamil country, with its long coastlines, carried on extensive trade during the Caṅkam Age with Rome and the Mediterranean countries in the west and with Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian countries in the east. Trade with Rome brought in not only wealth (as attested by numerous Roman coin-hoards in the Tamil country) but also early contacts with other literate societies using alphabetic scripts. Recent excavations of Roman settlements on the Red Sea coast of Egypt have brought to light a few inscribed sherds with Tamil names written in the Tamil-Brāhmī script of about the 1st century a.d.¹ An ancient papyrus document written in Greek and datable in the 2nd century a.d. in a museum at Vienna has been identified as a contract for shipment of merchandise from Muciri to Alexandria.² While the document itself is not in Tamil, one can infer from it the milieu of advanced literacy in the Tamil society whose merchants could enter into such trading contracts.