Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s10.9

c25.s10.9

The Early Sinhala-Brāhmī cave inscriptions also adopted the more visible Tamil-Brāhmī letter for *ī* for apparently the same practical reason but to denote the sound *i*.⁵ The change in value caused no confusion in Sinhala-Brāhmī as the Sinhala-Prakrit of the early cave inscriptions had no long vowels.⁶ In Late Sinhala-Brāhmī, the Tamil-Brāhmī form was replaced by the contemporary Southern Brāhmī form for *i*.⁷ There is, however, no doubt that the original value of the letter is *ī* as in the Brāhmī inscriptions of India.⁸ Though there are no examples of *ī* in the Late Tamil-Brāhmī or Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions included in the Corpus, the letter must have reverted fully to its original long value sometime after the Early Tamil-Brāhmī Period, as the Vaṭṭeḻuttu and Grantha forms ¹ and even the Sinhalese form² of *ī* are all clearly derived from it.