Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s1.1

c26.s1.1

One of the most interesting but least studied aspects of the Tamil-Brāhmī script is its orthography.¹ A study of the inscriptions reveals that early Tamil writing experimented with different orthographic models especially for denoting medial vowels before settling down to the system described in classical Tamil grammar. In retrospect, one can see that the palaeographic discoveries relating to the external features of the script were the easier ones to make than the unravelling of the internal orthographic conventions, which took longer to accomplish. A comparative study of the origin and evolution of the orthographic systems provides fresh insight into the relationship of Tamil-Brāhmī with the Mauryan and Bhattiprolu scripts and their relative chronology.