Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s20.t1.1

c25.s20.t1.1

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