Early South Indian Palaeography c17.2

c17.2

Besides the caverns which contain a number of inscriptions in the Brāhmī script in South India mentioned in the foregoing pages, there have been found a number of potsherds with such inscriptions in the course of archaeological excavations conducted at a few places in the Tamil country. The first among such sites is Arikamedu near Pondicherry where the excavations conducted by Mortimer Wheeler in 1944 yielded as many as eighteen potsherds with Brāhmī inscriptions. They have been already deciphered and published.¹ The excavations conducted by the Department of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Madras recently at Alagarai (1964) and at Uraiyur (1965 and 1966) have yielded a number of potsherds with inscriptions in the Drāviḍi Brāhmī script. Two potsherds were found at Alagarai and five with clearly inscribed inscriptions at Uraiyur.