Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c8.6

Language: English

c8.6

| Section | Page | Section | Page |
| 1.13.10 General characteristics of pottery inscriptions | 49 | 2.10 Renewed study of cave inscriptions: the first field expedition (1962-66) | 81 |
| 1.14 Inscribed objects with Tamil-Brāhmī legends: coins, seals and rings | 50 | 2.11 Tracings of cave inscriptions | 82 |
| 1.15 A unique inscribed touchstone from Thailand | 51 | 2.12 *Corpus of the Tamil-Brāhmī Inscriptions 1966 (1968)* | 83 |
| | | 2.13 Later publications on Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions | 84 |
| ## 2. Decipherment | | 2.13.1 R. Nagaswamy 1972 | 84 |
| 2.1 Introduction | 69 | 2.13.2 R. Panneerselvam 1972 | 84 |
| 2.2 Venkayya's reading | 69 | 2.13.3 M.S. Venkataswamy 1981 | 85 |
| 2.3 Krishna Sastri's readings | 70 | 2.13.4 *History of Tamil Nadu: Sangam Age (Political) 1983* | 86 |
| 2.3.1 Script | 71 | 2.14 Results of recent research on the orthography of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions | 86 |
| 2.3.2 Orthography | 71 | 2.14.1 Revised model of medial vowel notations | 87 |
| 2.3.3 Language | 72 | 2.14.2 Other orthographic 'peculiarities' in the cave inscriptions | 87 |
| 2.4 Breakthrough: Subrahmanya Aiyer's decipherment | 72 | 2.15 Second field expedition (1991-96) | 87 |
| 2.4.1 Phonological structure of the script | 73 | 2.15.1 Aims of the expedition | 89 |
| 2.4.2 Discovery of the special Tamil characters | 73 | 2.15.2 Special studies | 90 |
| 2.4.3 Identification of Tamil grammatical elements | 75 | 2.16 Chronology of Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions | 90 |
| 2.4.4 Language of cave inscriptions | 75 | 2.16.1 Chronology of pottery inscriptions in Tamil-Brāhmī | 91 |
| 2.4.5 Problems with Subrahmanya Aiyer's readings | 75 | 2.16.2 Changing trends in the chronology of cave inscriptions | 92 |
| 2.4.6 Assessment of Subrahmanya Aiyer's work | 77 | 2.16.3 Chronological classification | 92 |
| 2.5 A comic interlude | 77 | 2.16.4 Reappraisal of chronological evidence | 93 |
| 2.6 Elements of Bhattiprolu orthography in cave inscriptions | 78 | 2.16.5 Palaeographic evidence | 93 |
| 2.7 The first linguistic study | 79 | 2.16.6 Orthographic evidence | 94 |
| 2.8 Discovery of the *puḷḷi* in the Tamil-Brāhmī script | 80 | | |
| 2.9 The first book on cave inscriptions | 80 | | |