Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s15.t6: 5.15.6 Literal translation

c25.s15.t6.1

There is, however, a linguistic problem presented by the literal word-for-word translation of the Prakrit legends resulting in texts which are not in idiomatic or correct Tamil. Thus, while Prakrit requires every attribute to be in the genitive case to be in accord with the substantive noun in the genitive, there is no such usage in Tamil. The repetitive addition of *-ku* to the attributes as in *aracaṉ-ku* and *makaṉ-ku* is not in accordance with Tamil grammar. It is clear that the scribe was not too familiar with Tamil and mechanically translated each Prakrit expression literally into Tamil producing the irregular forms seen in the coin-legends.