Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages c7.s2.t6.25

c7.s2.t6.25

¹⁰⁷ Later scripts used for Tamil did, however, develop a vowel cancellation marker consisting of a dot above the consonant (*puḷḷi*; cf. n. 37) which has the same effect as the vowelless consonant system, i.e., eliminating the need for conjuncts, but which departs less radically from the standard Indic graphic principles. The *puḷḷi* is attested as early as the second century A.D. in Dravidian coin legends (D. C. Sircar, "Silver Coin of Vasishthi-putra Satakarni," EI 35, 1963–64, 247–52; see also R. Nagaswamy, "A Bilingual Coin of a Satavahana," in *Seminar on Inscriptions, 1966* [see n. 104], 200–2, and P. Panneerselvam, "Further Light on the Bilingual Coin of the Sātavāhanas," IIJ 11, 1968–69, 281–8), and is also referred to in the Tolkāppiyam (*Eṟuttadikāram, sūtra* 15). But it is difficult to know whether *puḷḷi* was a survival of the peculiar vowel notation system of the Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions, or evolved separately as a result of the internal phonetic characteristics of Tamil.