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116 nto desuetude sometime after the conquest of that country by the Chola king Parantaka I during the first quarter of the tenth century. In Travancore and Malabar the Vatteluttu survived some centuries longer.

The two main questions we have now to consider in connection with the earlier Tamil alphabet or Vatteluttu are,—(1) the date of its introduction into the Tamil country; and (2) whether it was borrowed by the Tamils direct from the north-western Semitics, or was only an earlier modification of the Asoka or Brahmi characters as some scholars seem to think.

The earliest Vatteluttu inscriptions known to us belong to the eighth century A. D. and do not go further back ; and the earliest description of that alphabet is what we find in the grammar of Tolkapyar. It is said that Agastya was the first Tamil grammarian ; but we know nothing about his date or the existence of his grammar, except that Tolkapyar was his student, even which seems extremely questionable. The date of the introduction of the Vetteluttu alphabet cannot for the present be carried earlier than the age of Tolkapyar. In his monograph 'On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians', Dr, Burnell assigns the eighth century A.D. as the probable date of Tolkapyar, assuming that there was no Tamil literature before that period and that Tolkapyar professed Jainism or Buddhism, the predominant religions at the time, according to this writer, in Southern India. Both these premises have since