Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s18.1

c26.s18.1

One of the characteristic orthographic features of the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions, especially in the Early Period, is what may be called 'analytical' writing in which non-initial word-segments and grammatical suffixes commencing with vowels occur separately without sandhi or the glides *y* or *v* in between. This style of writing in which segmentation occurs at the junction of words, or words and suffixes, cannot be described as alphabetic as suggested by Subramanian.¹ His theory is not borne out by the evidence,² though it has been repeated in later publications.³ The Tamil scripts have remained basically syllabic (as the parent Brāhmī) with the exception of free-standing basic consonants.