Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s10.25

c25.s10.25

The unusual manner in which the letters of the short vowels *e* and *o* are formed from the respective long vowels deserves special attention. In the Brāhmī script, the letters of the long vowels are derived from those of the respective short vowels as in the pairs *a* > *ā*, *i* > *ī* and *u* > *ū*. The process is reversed in Tamil-Brāhmī only for the pairs *ē* > *e* and *ō* > *o*. In these cases, the Brāhmī script has only the long vowels. These were taken over by Tamil-Brāhmī and were employed, to begin with, to denote both the long and short sounds which could be recognised only from the context. However, as Tamil has also the short vowels *e* and *o*, the need to distinguish the length of the vowels was felt and the *puḷḷi* was added as a diacritic mark to the short vowels *e* and *o* (both initial and medial) to distinguish them from the respective long vowels. This development proves conclusively the derivation of Tamil-Brāhmī from the Brāhmī script.