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Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c27.s7.t1: 7.6.1 In the Corpus

Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c27.s7.t1

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7.6.1 In the Corpus

c27.s7.t1.1

The Tamil script is an alpha-syllabic writing system in which not only vowels and consonants but also consonant-vowels (*uyirmey*), open syllables of the CV type, are graphically represented as single letters (*Tol. Eḻu.* 17-18). In theory, 216 consonant-vowels are possible by the combination of 18 consonants with 12 vowels. However, the actual number is less as some of the combinations do not occur in the language.

c27.s7.t1.2

101 consonant-vowels are attested in the Corpus out of a possible total of 198 (combinations of 18 consonants with 11 vowels). The distribution of consonant-vowels in the Corpus is summarised in Table 7.2.

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