Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s3.22

c25.s3.22

In the early times in the history of writing, the Brāhmī script which was current in India had a group of letters consisting of nine vowels (*a*, *ā*, *i*, *ī*, *u*, *ū*, *ē*, *ai* and *ō*) and fourteen consonants (*k*, *ṅ*, *c*, *ñ*, *ṭ*, *ṇ*, *t*, *n*, *p*, *m*, *y*, *r*, *l* and *v*) common to all the areas irrespective of the language for which they were used. The additional letters such as the 15 aspirated letters and 4 letters (*s*, *ś* *sh* and *h*) in the case of the Northern alphabets, and 4 letters (*ḻ*, *ḷ*, *ṟ* and *ṉ*) in the case of the Dravidian alphabets have been specially devised to serve the respective languages that used those alphabets.⁴