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Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s4: 5.4 Origin of Tamil-Brāhmī

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s4

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5.4 Origin of Tamil-Brāhmī

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Tamil-Brāhmī is derived from Brāhmī. Compare Palaeographic Charts 1 and 2 showing the standard forms of Brāhmī and Tamil-Brāhmī scripts respectively. The evidence, which is quite conclusive, may be briefly summarised as follows:

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(a) All but 4 of the 26 letters in Tamil-Brāhmī (i.e., more than four-fifths of the total) are identical or nearly so with the corresponding letters of Brāhmī and have the same phonetic values.

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(b) Even the additional letters in Tamil-Brāhmī viz., *ḻ*, *ḷ*, *ṟ* and *ṉ*, are adapted from letters with the nearest phonetic values in Brāhmī (Palaeographic Chart 3).³

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³ See section 5.12.

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(c) The medial vowel signs of Tamil-Brāhmī are also identical with the respective signs in Brāhmī and have the same phonetic values.

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(d) The alphabetical order of letters common to both the scripts is identical.

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(e) It is revealing that *Tolkāppiyam* places *ṟ*, *ṉ*, *l* and *ḷ* at the end of the series of stops, nasals and liquids (*Tol. Eḻu.* 19-21). This arrangement deviates from the order based on articulatory phonetics. This small but significant detail indicates that the four special letters were originally regarded as additions to the alphabet taken over from Brāhmī. The additional letter *ṉ* is also described as the last in the Tamil alphabet (ibid. 1).

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Tamil-Brāhmī is formed by adapting Brāhmī to the requirements of the Tamil phonetic system in the following manner.

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*Palaeographic changes*

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(a) Omission of letters for sounds not present in Tamil viz., voiced consonants, aspirates, sibilants, the *anusvāra* (*ṁ*) and the *visarga* (*ḥ*);

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(b) Addition of letters to represent sounds in Tamil which are not available in Brāhmī viz., *ḻ*, *ḷ*, *ṟ* and *ṉ*;

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(c) Modification of letters by the employment of a special diacritic mark viz., the *puḷḷi*, to:

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Figure 5.1. Minor Rock Edict of Asoka at Brahmagiri. Karnataka.

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Figure 5.2. An inscribed casket from Bhattiprolu. Andhra Pradesh.

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(i) depict basic consonants in final position;
(ii) avoid ligaturing of consonant clusters; and
(iii) distinguish the short vowels *e* and *o* from the respective long vowels.

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*Orthographic changes*

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Along with the above palaeographic changes, several orthographic modifications especially in the notation of medial vowels were also effected in Tamil-Brāhmī. These are discussed in detail in Chapter 6.

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