Indian Epigraphy c14.3

c14.3

There is a general tendency among scholars to describe the alphabet used in the early inscriptions discovered in the countries of Indonesia and Indochina as Pallava-Grantha and to speak of the expansion of Indo-Aryan culture in those territories from the Coromandel Coast during the rule of the Pallavas.¹ These views are however wrong. In the first place, the alphabet, used in the Pallava inscriptions from the 4th to the 6th century A.D. as well as in most of the early epigraphs of the lands beyond the Bay of Bengal, cannot be called Pallava-Grantha. It is really the Late Brāhmī common to the southern and western parts of India. Secondly, the earliest inscriptions of Indochina and Indonesia are written in verse like the records of the Early Kadambas of the Kannaḍa-speaking area and unlike those of the Early Pallavas.²