Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s6.t1.1

c25.s6.t1.1

An overall palaeographic comparison of the earliest known forms of the common letters between Brāhmī and Tamil-Brāhmī (Charts 1 and 2) leads to the broad judgement that the time of borrowing and adaptation from Brāhmī to Tamil-Brāhmī cannot be later than the end of the Mauryan Age. In general, the Early Tamil-Brāhmī letters share the primitive appearance and the tall and angular forms of the Asokan Brāhmī. (Compare, for example, the Brahmagiri Rock Edict of Asoka in Fig. 5.¹ with the Mangulam grants of Neṭuñceḻiyaṉ in Figs. 8.1 & 8.².) The squarish letters with head-marks ('serifs') of the Northern as well as the Southern Brāhmī scripts of the post-Mauryan era are too evolved to have formed the prototypes for the earliest Tamil-Brāhmī forms.