Page:Tamil studies.djvu/152

Rh The vast difference that exists between Tamil and the Aryan languages in their vocabulary, between the Tamils and the Indo-Aryans, the contempt which the one had for the other, and the great antiquity and the divine origin which the Tamils claim for their 'sweet' language and its grammar—all these seem to favour the indigenous origin of the Tamil Vatteluttu alphabet.

The latest epigraphical researches have brought to light the existence in the Pandya country of the Brahmi or Asoka inscriptions. Rai Bahadur V. Venkayya, Epigraphist to the Government of India, believes that this discovery ‘in the Madura and Tinnevelly districts proves beyond doubt that the Mauryan alphabet was in vise all over India', and that this seems to him 'to militate against the theory of the indigenous origin' of the Vatteluttu alphabet. We do not for a moment question Dr. Buhler's statement 'that the older Mauryan alphabet was used over the whole of India'; but it is extremely doubtful whether this alphabet was used in the Tamil country by the literates of all castes and creeds-Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Animists alike. As a matter of fact we know that the English alphabet is at present in use from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin among the educated classes, and even English inscriptions are found almost everywhere in India. And yet, do we not see side by side with it scores of Indian alphabets? The ubiquity of an alien alphabet in a particular country cannot, therefore, be a proof for the non-existence of other alphabetic systems and of