Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s3.5

c25.s3.5

There are some allusions to different types of letters (*eḻuttu*) in medieval commentaries and *nikaṇṭus*. Subramanian who has compiled the references and commented exhaustively on them, identifies the technical expressions occurring in them with successive stages of the evolution of writing from the pictographic to the syllabic and alphabetic.² However, considering the lateness of these literary sources (ca. 8-11 centuries *A.D.*), they are more likely to refer to symbols of various kinds known to have been employed in the medieval inscriptions and palm-leaf manuscripts.