Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c26.s8.6

c26.s8.6

Another interesting question is why the *puḷḷi* system alone survived, but not the Bhattiprolu system which has an equally unambiguous though different orthographic notation. Firstly, it appears that the removal of the 'inherent' *-a* from the consonantal symbol was too radical a departure from all other Indian systems of writing which still follow this principle. Influence from Upper South India and Sri Lanka must have brought about the acceptance of the principle of the 'inherent' *-a* in the TB-II and TB-III systems. Secondly, as the syllables ending in *-a* outnumber all others in Tamil, it is more economical to treat the unmarked consonantal symbol as having the 'inherent' *-a* and invent a marker (*puḷḷi*) to denote the relatively infrequent basic consonants. The *puḷḷi* also became a convenient marker to distinguish the short *e* and *o* from the respective long vowels. These improvements enabled the *puḷḷi* system to survive all the other systems and become the sole standard notation in Tamil grammatical tradition.²