Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s15.t2.1

c26.s15.t2.1

The clue to the understanding of this special usage comes from the TB-I notation with which it is closely associated as may be seen from the word list above. The TB-I notation attempted to distinguish three medial vowel-lengths viz., *-ā*, *-a* and Ø, but provided for only two as it employed the same marker for both *-ā* and *-a*. On this analogy, we may formulate the following empirical rules for the special usage relating to the *u-* vowels: