Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c4.1

c4.1

I became interested in the Brāhmī script when I was working in New Delhi during 1958-61 and came into contact with Dr. C. Sivaramamurti at the National Museum. When I returned to Madras in 1961, Prof. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri suggested that I take up the study of the Tamil cave inscriptions which had not been satisfactorily deciphered. He got for me a set of estampages (ink impressions) of the cave inscriptions from the Government Epigraphist, but I found them too illegible to work on. I decided to visit the caves to look at the inscriptions themselves and discovered to my pleasant surprise that they were better preserved than suggested by the faint estampages. My publication of the 'forgotten' Early Cēra inscriptions at Pugalur and Early Pāṇṭiya inscriptions at Mangulam in 1965-66 aroused much scholarly interest. I completed the first spell of fieldwork in 1966 and published the preliminary results of the study in the *Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966* (1968). The readings were well received and I was encouraged to continue the work.