Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s10: 6.10 Medial vowel notations in Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions: a comparative study
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s10
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6.10 Medial vowel notations in Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions: a comparative study
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The characteristic features of the five stages of development of medial vowel notations which have been described above are summarised in Fig. 6.³.⁴ A comparative study of the notations shows clearly that all of them are ultimately derived from the original vowel-marker system of the Mauryan Brāhmī script. The modifications are minimal and specifically designed to suit the needs of Tamil. However, TB-I and TB-II systems were, in spite of the advantages gained by the respective modifications, no more than transitional, short-lived experiments replaced by the more stable systems. The comparison also brings out the fact that the Bhattiprolu system which developed from TB-I, and the *puḷḷi* system from TB-II, must be later than the respective systems replaced by them.
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³ See discussion in section 5.14.
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⁴ In Fig. 6.3, the personal name *cātan* is merely illustrative; the alveolar nasal *ṉ* of Tamil-Brāhmī is not shown in order to simplify the comparison.
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In my earlier studies of the cave inscriptions, I had suggested that TB-I and TB-II notations are successive stages in the orthographic evolution of the Tamil-Brāhmī script.⁵ However, further structural studies and stratigraphy of inscribed pottery from excavations of ancient Tamil sites indicate that it is better to consider TB-I and TB-II as parallel and independent developments from the Mauryan Brāhmī script. The essential evidence is as follows.
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⁵ I. Mahadevan 1970a: pp. 5-7; 1971: pp. 82-83.
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(1) Gift Siromoney has pointed out that the TB-II notation seems to be structurally closer to the Mauryan Brāhmī and is more easily derived from it directly than through TB-I.⁶
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⁶ Gift Siromoney 1982: pp. 13-21; 1983: pp. 27-28; 1990: pp. 105-106.
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Figure 6.3. Medial vowel notations in the Mauryan, Bhattiprolu and Tamil-Brāhmī scripts.
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Figure 6.4. Chronology of medial vowel notations in the Corpus.
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| Medial vowel notations | Number of inscriptions |||||||| Total |
| | **Early Tamil-Brāhmī** | | | **Late Tamil-Brāhmī** | | | **Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu** | | |
| | **2 cent. B.C.** | **1 cent. B.C.** | **1 cent. A.D.** | **2 cent. A.D.** | **3 cent. A.D.** | **4 cent. A.D.** | **5 cent. A.D.** | **6 cent. A.D.** | |
| TB-I | 35 | 16† | | | | | | | 51 |
| TB-II | | 3 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 3 | 2 | | 32 |
| TB-III (*puḷḷi*) | | | | 1 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 5 | 27 |
| Total | 35 | 19 | 5 | 9 | 16 | 5 | 16 | 5 | 110 |
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† 8 inscriptions in TB-I and 8 others in TB-I / TB-II mixed notations.
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Table 6. 2 : Frequency and chronological distribution of medial vowel notations in the Early Tamil inscriptions in the Corpus (2) At Arikamedu, Casal excavated a potsherd inscribed in the TB-II style from the 'megalithic' level predating the period of Roman trade.¹ This inscription, which appears to be securely dated by stratigraphic evidence to ca. 2nd century B.C., vouches for the existence of the TB-II notation also from the earliest times in the Tamil-Brāhmī script.
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¹ Casal J.-M., 1949: Pl. XIII D. Vimala Begley drew my attention to the significance of this discovery. Casal's sherd is illustrated in Vimala Begley *et al.* 1996: Fig. 5. 17 at p. 304.
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The revised model² for the evolution of medial vowel notations in Tamil-Brāhmī leads to another problem: How did two parallel, mutually exclusive and competing systems of medial vowel notations appear at about the same time and within a relatively small and homogenous linguistic community? No solution to this problem is yet in sight.³
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³ For a discussion on the unsolved problems of Tamil-Brāhmī, see I. Mahadevan 1985b: p. 126 and the response in K.G. Krishnan 1990: pp. 92-93.