Page:Tamil studies.djvu/142

Rh Very recently writings in the Asoka or Brahmi characters also have been discovered in the districts of Madura and Tinnevelly.

But the introduction of all these did not take place at one and the same period. The Vatteluttu or the original Tamil alphabet was supplanted by the Grantha-Tamil or the modern Tamil characters in the Tamil kingdoms at different periods, which were perhaps conterminous with the migration and settlement of the Brahmans in these countries. In the Pallava province (Tondaimandalam), where they settled first before proceeding to the southern districts, the Pallava characters—an off-shoot of the Brahmi or the North Indian script—were in use prior to A. D. 650. We have no documentary evidence to prove at what period the Vatteluttu was in use there. The earliest Chola inscriptions belong only to the tenth century, and all of them are in the Grantha-Tamil characters, which appear to be a later development of the Pallava-Tamil used in the Kuram and Kasakudi copper-plates of the seventh and eighth centuries. Occasionally, Vatteluttu inscriptions may also be inet with in the Chola country, but most of these belong to the Pandya kings. It is not therefore possible in the absence of the earlier Chola records to state when the Vatteluttu was ousted by the Grantha-Tamil characters in the Tanjore District. In the Pandya country, on the other hand, we have inscriptions in both scripts going up to the eighth century A.,D., and from these it will appear that Vatteluttu came