Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s17.t1.3

c26.s17.t1.3

¹ See, for example, Nos. *1, 8, 9, 12, 13, 24*, etc., in the Corpus for the occurrence of doubled consonants in the Early Period. Subrahmanya Aiyer's observations that "doubling of consonants came into later use in the Tamil language" and that its absence "is a telling feature of (the) records" (1924: p. 288) are incorrect. He did not read the longest inscription at Mangulam (No. *1* in the present Corpus) which contains no fewer than five of the earliest instances of doubled consonants. His own reading of the Anaimalai inscription (No. *60* in the present Corpus) has two more instances. He missed two more instances in the Kongarpuliyankulam inscriptions (Nos. *12* and *13* in the present Corpus).