Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s4.1

c26.s4.1

Decipherment of Tamil-Brāhmī has now firmly established that there were originally two parallel and seemingly independent systems of medial vowel notations (designated here as TB-I and TB-II) in this script. Both systems were evolved with the same objective, namely, to be able to represent basic consonants in final position and in consonant clusters. They were successful in doing so and obtained the additional advantage of getting rid of the cumbersome *samyuktākshara* system of the Brāhmī script. However, both systems proved to be imperfect and unstable, each giving way, in a characteristically different manner, to another improved system. One of them is known only from the Bhattiprolu casket inscriptions, and the other, the *puḷḷi* notation (TB-III system), is the one described in the earliest extant Tamil grammar (*Tolkāppiyam*) (see Table 6.¹).