Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s22.t1.6

c26.s22.t1.6

The discovery of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions has brought to light new evidence in the form of a sizeable vocabulary of Old Tamil interspersed with loanwords from Prakrit in a script derived from Brāhmī which has a complete set of voiced consonants. The significance of this new development for re-examining the problem of voicing of consonants in Old Tamil has been recognised;¹ but no in-depth study could be undertaken earlier for want of reliable texts. The evidence presently available may be summarised as follows.