Page:Tamil studies.djvu/151

124 If Tamil borrowed and developed its alphabet from Brahmi of North India like the other cultivated languages of the Dravidian family, it should have taken place before its grammar was written. And in that case, the tendency should have shown itself in an efficient and complete alphabetic system as in the sister languages, Telugu and Kanarese. On the other hand, the simplicity of the alphabetic and the deficiency of its phonetic systems, and their stationary character for nearly 2,000 years point to a different source for its origin. We are glad to observe that this is also the view taken by Mr. R. Sewell, I.C.S. He writes thus : "The meagre character and simple forms of the Tamil alphabets almost certainly derived from a Semitic source, perhaps, Aramic or Himayaritic, point to its having been adopted and having become fixed before the Kharoshti was known'.

Ainong the Dravidian races of South India the Tamils alone made use of the Vatteluttu alphabet from time immemorial, whilst their Telugu and Kanarese neighbours have, so far as epigraphical researches reveal, been using some alphabet or other which had its origin from the Brahmi of Upper India. The principle of adding a dot for consonants is peculiar only to Tamil, and is found in no other alphabetic systems adopted from Brahmi. It is possible that the Tamils might have borrowed it from the Semitics of Western Asia and used it for consonants instead of for vowel signs, as in the Hebrew and other Semitic alphabets.