Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s19: 5.19 The Vaṭṭeḻuttu script

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s19

Language: English

5.19 The Vaṭṭeḻuttu script

5.19.1 Origin of Vaṭṭeḻuttu

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Burnell thought that Vaṭṭeḻuttu was not related to the Asokan alphabet and must have developed independently from Phoenician or Aramaic scripts.¹ Bühler described Vaṭṭeḻuttu as a 'cursive' form of the Tamil script, "which bears the same relation to the Tamil as the modern northern alphabets of the clerks and merchants to their originals".² These theories proposed in the late 19th century in the early days of South Indian epigraphical studies have become obsolete after the discovery and decipherment of the Tamil-Brāhmī and Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions. Gopinatha Rao³ and Subramanian⁴ were able to demonstrate that both Vaṭṭeḻuttu and Tamil scripts originated from Brāhmī, but had separate lines of evolution. Sivaramamurti published palaeographic charts tracing the origin of each letter of the Vaṭṭeḻuttu and Tamil scripts from the corresponding letter in the Tamil cave inscriptions, but admitted the existence of a millennium-long gap between the cave inscriptions and the medieval Tamil inscriptions on which his charts are based.⁵ In so far as the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script is concerned, this enormous gap has now been bridged by the more recent discoveries noticed below.

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¹ A.C. Burnell 1874 (1994 reprint): pp. 5-6, 38-42.

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² G. Bühler 1896 (1959 reprint): p. 95.

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³ T.A. Gopinatha Rao 1908 a & b, TAS. I (1988 reprint): pp. 299- 344; 395-431.

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⁴ T.N. Subramanian 1957: pp. 1535-1562. See also R. Nagaswamy 1971, 1972b & c and 1973 for discussion.

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⁵ C. Sivaramamurti 1952: charts and comments on p. 227.

5.19.2 Evolution of Vaṭṭeḻuttu: the early phase (5-6 centuries A.D.)

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(a) *Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions at Pulankurichi

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The two rock inscriptions discovered in 1979 at Pulankurichi are the earliest and by far the longest of the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu records.¹ They are assigned to ca. 5th century A.D. on palaeographic evidence. The script employed in the inscriptions at this site is in the transitional stage between Tamil-Brāhmī and Vaṭṭeḻuttu (see Chart 8). The vowels *a*, *ā*, *e* and *o* and most of the consonants still retain the Late Tamil-Brāhmī forms. The vowels *i* and *u* and the consonants *ṇ*, *n*, *l*, *ḷ* are more advanced and have attained the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu forms. From the palaeographic point of view, the importance of the Pulankurichi inscriptions is that they have finally set at rest the controversy regarding the origin of the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script and proved conclusively its derivation from Tamil-Brāhmī.

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¹ R. Nagaswamy 1981c: pp. 2-67 to 2-71. Natana Kasinathan 1983: pp. 157-165. Y. Subbarayalu and M.R. Raghava Varier 1991: pp. 57-69. The inscriptions have not been included in the Corpus, but see Palaeographic Chart 8.

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(b) *Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions on herostones

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The remarkable discoveries made by Nagaswamy and his colleagues of numerous herostones inscribed in Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu from Chengam Taluk² and the adjoining Dharmapuri District³ in the north-west of the Tamil country have revolutionised our understanding of the position of Vaṭṭeḻuttu *vis-a-vis* the Tamil script.⁴ They have confirmed what was only suspected earlier that Vaṭṭeḻuttu was current all over the Tamil country until it was displaced by the Tamil script patronised by the Pallavas and later by the Cōḻas.⁵ The pace of displacement was, however, quite slow. The herostones within the Pallava territories bearing the names and regnal years of successive Pallava rulers from Simhavarman III to Nandivarman II (mid-sixth to mid-eighth centuries A.D.) are exclusively in Vaṭṭeḻuttu. The statistics in Table 5.3 relating to the changeover in the scripts employed in the herostone inscriptions in the Tamil country are revealing.⁶

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² *Chengam Naṭukarkaḷ*. See also K.G. Krishnan (1971-73 and 1973-74) for the earliest herostones.

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⁴ See R. Nagaswamy (ed.) 1974. R. Govindaraj 1994; 2001: pp. 27-41. K. Rajan 2000.

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⁵ "It is therefore to be presumed that the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script was in use throughout the Tamil country in the earlier days, that it fell into disuse after the introduction of the Grantha-Tamil by the Pallavas in their dominion, but that it continued to exist in the Gaṅgavāḍi, the Vāṇakappāḍi and the North Koṅgu portions which were not directly under the Pallava rule, even though the other script was slowly gaining preference." (T.N. Subramanian 1957: p. 1562).

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⁶ Abridged from K. Rajan 2000: Table 3 at p. 46.

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| Period (A.D.) | Vaṭṭeḻuttu | Tamil script |
| 400-600 | 31 | – |
| 601-800 | 91 | 9 |
| 801-1000 | 8 | 70 |
| 1001-1200 | – | 20 |

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Table 5.³. Changeover from Vaṭṭeḻuttu to Tamil script in herostone inscriptions.

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³ *Dharmapuri Kalveṭṭukaḷ*.

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The Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions included in the present Corpus (Nos. *101-121*) are mostly recent discoveries which illustrate the evolution of the script during the transitional period (5-6 centuries a.d.). The evolution of each letter from the Late Tamil-Brāhmī to the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu forms found in these inscriptions has been studied above (Palaeographic Charts 4 to 6).

5.19.3 Evolution of Vaṭṭeḻuttu: the middle phase (7-10 centuries a.d.)

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The middle phase may be described as the Classical Age of Vaṭṭeḻuttu, when the script was patronised by independent and powerful rulers of the Pāṇṭiya and Cēra dynasties. The copperplate grants and numerous temple inscriptions of this period are the primary sources for the reconstruction of the medieval history of the Pāṇṭiya and Cēra kingdoms.¹ While the Tamil script supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the northern region from the middle of the 8th century a.d., Vaṭṭeḻuttu held its ground in the southern region up to the end of the 10th century a.d. After the Cōḻa conquest of the Pāṇṭiya country and its incorporation into the Cōḻa Empire, Vaṭṭeḻuttu was displaced by the Tamil script in the southern region also.

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¹ See especially *SII*. XIV (*The Pāṇḍyas*); *TAS*. I-III; *Pāṇṭiyar Ceppēṭukaḷ*.

5.19.4 Evolution of Vaṭṭeḻuttu: the last phase (11-19 centuries a.d.)

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Vaṭṭeḻuttu was current for almost another millennium in the Cēra country which was never fully integrated with the Cōḻa empire. With the passage of time, the letters became ever more rounded with many of its characters losing their individuality and becoming unrecognisable except from the context.² During this period, the western dialect of Tamil spoken in the Cēra country gradually evolved into Malayalam which borrowed so heavily from Sanskrit that the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script based on Tamil phonology became too inadequate to express the sounds in the new language. In the initial stages, the deficiency was made up by using Grantha characters for the additional sounds as in the Tamil inscriptions of the eastern region. Ultimately, however, it became necessary for Malayalam to have a script of its own, which was formed from the Grantha script; the Vaṭṭeḻuttu letters for which Grantha had no equivalents were also included in the script. The new script which came into existence towards the end of the 14th century a.d. was called Ārya-eḻuttu to distinguish it from Tekkaṉ Malayalam, the local name for Vaṭṭeḻuttu in South Kerala, and Kōleḻuttu, another variant of Vaṭṭeḻuttu current in North Kerala. Even after the introduction of Ārya-eḻuttu for Malayalam, Vaṭṭeḻuttu lingered on as it was popular among the sections of the population whose dialects were not so heavily Sanskritised as that of the Nambūdiri Brāhmans. Gradually, however, the Malayalam script completely replaced the phonologically deficient and palaeographically degenerate Vaṭṭeḻuttu by the end of the 18th century a.d. It is said that the Royal Chancellery of the State of Travancore in South Kerala continued to use Vaṭṭeḻuttu even in the 19th century until the Malayalam script was adopted in the time of Svāti Tirunāḷ.³

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² For the Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions in the Cēra country, see *TAS*, especially Vols. I-III.

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³ For a discussion of the last phase of Vaṭṭeḻuttu, see R. Krishnamurthy 1982 and 1985.