Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s17.t5: 6.17.5 Doubled consonants in Early Tamil inscriptions: a statistical study
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s17.t5
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6.17.5 Doubled consonants in Early Tamil inscriptions: a statistical study
c26.s17.t5.1
As mentioned earlier, the inscriptions represent doubled consonants with increasing frequency in the Late Period and in the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions, moving closer to the linguistic usage. This trend is brought out in Table 6.³. The overall trend is quite clear. While avoidance of doubled consonants was the norm in the Early Period, the employment of doubled consonants became dominant in the Late Period and almost the exclusive orthographic convention in the Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu inscriptions.
c26.s17.t5.2
| | Early Ta. Br. | | Late Ta. Br. | | Early Vaṭṭeḻuttu | |
| | No. | % | No. | % | No. | % |
| No. of times doubling of consonants is avoided | 77 | 83.70 | 25 | 37.31 | 4 | 13.33 |
| No. of times doubling of consonants is present | 15 | 16.30 | 42 | 62.69 | 26 | 86.67 |
| Total No. of times doubling of consonants is expected | 92 | | 67 | | 30 | |
c26.s17.t5.3
Table 6.³. Frequency of doubled consonants in the Corpus.
c26.s17.t5.4
³ See Commentary (63.4). See also A. Velu Pillai 1976: pp. 35-36 for examples from later inscriptions.