Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s19.t4: 5.19.4 Evolution of Vaṭṭeḻuttu: the last phase (11-19 centuries a.d.)
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s19.t4
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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.