Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s22.t8.2

c26.s22.t8.2

(A) There was no voicing in Tamil when the Tamil-Brāhmī script was devised and *Tolkāppiyam* was written. Had voicing been present, the readily available and known characters for the voiced consonants in the Brāhmī script would have been borrowed. This evidence is reinforced by the virtual avoidance of voiced consonants even in the Prakrit loanwords occurring in Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions, indicating the influence of Tamil phonology with its lack of voicing. Equally important is the negative evidence of *Tolkāppiyam* which devotes a whole chapter to articulatory phonetics (*Tol. Eḻu. Piṟappiyal*) which would have dealt with voicing if the feature was present in the language.¹