Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s13.1

c25.s13.1

When one looks at the orderly sequence of the medial vowel signs in the Brāhmī script (Chart 1), one cannot but wonder at the originality and effectiveness of the system which has the brevity of syllabaries and the simplicity of alphabets.⁵ There can hardly be any doubt that the system is indigenously developed. The primitiveness of the signs in Asokan Brāhmī indicates that we are looking at the system in the very initial stage of its invention. A comparison with the medial vowel signs in Tamil-Brāhmī (Chart 2) shows not only that the two systems are identical, but also that the date of adaptation of Tamil-Brāhmī from Mauryan Brāhmī cannot be later than the end of the Mauryan Age. The evolution of the medial vowel signs in Tamil-Brāhmī and Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu is traced in Chart 6 (from the occurrences in the Corpus), Chart 7 (based on pottery inscriptions) and Chart 8 (from the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions at Pulankurichi).