Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s2: 6.2 Orthographic 'peculiarities' of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions

c26.s2.1

The Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions could not be read satisfactorily even after their palaeographic features had become known, mainly because the unusual orthographic conventions in the script were not fully understood. Even such simple Tamil words like *tantai*-y 'father' and *makaṉ* 'son' assume the apparently strange forms *tānataiya* and *mākāṇa* in the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions. Again, the simple Tamil word *kal* 'stone' is spelt *kāla* or *kala* or *kal* in different inscriptions indicating the presence of more than one orthographic convention in the script. There are also other orthographic 'peculiarities' like, for example, the employment of the *ī* symbol for *i*, the *ū* symbol for *u*, the same set of symbols for *e*/*ē* and *o*/*ō*, avoidance of doubling of consonants, absence of voiced consonants, etc. These usages are too numerous and too systematic to be dismissed as scribal errors. An attempt is made in the present study to investigate them and find explanations.