Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s20.t1: 5.20.1 Emergence of the Tamil script
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s20.t1
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5.20.1 Emergence of the Tamil script
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The Tamil script is not directly derived from Tamil-Brāhmī, although its ultimate descent from Brāhmī is not open to doubt. Unlike in the case of Vaṭṭeḷuttu, no earlier inscriptions have been found linking the Tamil script with the Tamil-Brāhmī of the cave inscriptions. Inscriptional evidence points to the creation of a new script for Tamil in the Pallava kingdom around the beginning of the 7th century A.D. The script was formed by simplifying the Grantha script (which itself is derived from the Southern Brāhmī script of the Prakrit Charters of the Early Pallavas) and adding to it the necessary additional letters from Vaṭṭeḷuttu. The similarity between Pallava Grantha and Tamil scripts is illustrated by the Sendalai Pillar Inscriptions of ca. 8th century A.D. (Fig. 5.16).¹ The new script was patronised by the Pallava rulers and their feudatories. However, only very few stone inscriptions in the Tamil language are known from Mahendravarman I (ca. 590-630 A.D.) to Paramesvaravarman II (720-732 A.D.). During this period, most of the stone inscriptions of the Pallavas are in Sanskrit. The changeover from Sanskrit to the almost exclusive use of Tamil as the language of the stone inscriptions of the Pallavas happened only from the time of Nandivarman II in about the middle of the 8th century A.D.² The statistics in Table 5.4 on the languages and scripts of the inscriptions in Tamil Nadu have been compiled by Govindaraj³ from the *Topographical List of Inscriptions from Tamil Nadu and Kerala States*.⁴
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¹ K.V. Subrahmanya Aiyer 1915-16, *EI*. XIII: pp. 134-149 (not illustrated). The photograph in Fig. 5.16 is by Michael Lockwood from the estampage taken by S. Rajagopal, TNSA.
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² T.V. Mahalingam 1988.
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³ R. Govindaraj 1994: Table I.
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| Period (A.D.) | Vaṭṭeḷuttu | Tamil | Grantha |
| 500-600 | 25 | – | 2 |
| 601-700 | 54 | 8 | 40 |
| 701-800 | 49 | 41 | 30 |
| 801-985 | 236 | 1762 | 52 |
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Table 5.⁴. Scripts used in inscriptions in Tamil Nadu (6th-10th centuries A.D.).
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⁴ T.V. Mahalingam (ed.) *Topographical List of Inscriptions from Tamil Nadu and Kerala States* (in 10 vols.).
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Note the complete absence of inscriptions in the Tamil script before the time of Mahendravarman I and the steep increase in the number of such inscriptions from the 9th century A.D. coinciding with the changeover to the Tamil language in the Pallava inscriptions.
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The Classical Age of the Tamil script commences with the ascendancy of the Cōḻas from the middle of the 9th century. The Cōḻas, who were earlier the feudatories of the Pallavas, inherited the Tamil script from them and spread its use in all the conquered territories (except the Cēra country) making the Tamil script the exclusive script of the language in Tamil Nadu from about the beginning of the 11th century A.D.