Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s22.t8.4

c26.s22.t8.4

(B) The comparative method points to the existence of lenis articulation and voicing in medial position in Dravidian even prior to the pre-Tamil stage. As these features are present in modern Dravidian languages including Tamil, they must have existed in Old Tamil also, but not provided for in its orthography.² This omission is explained by assuming that those who created the earliest script for Tamil must have been aware of the principle of the phoneme and saw no point in borrowing Brāhmī voiced consonants to indicate voicing of allophones in complementary distribution which is completely predictable.³ The consequent reduction achieved in the number of characters in the script was probably perceived as an advantage.