Tamil-Brahmi

Tamil Brahmi
Mangulam Tamil Brahmi inscription at Dakshin Chithra, Chennai.
Type	Abugida
Languages	Archaic Tamil
Time period	from the 3th or 2nd century BCE to the 6th century CE
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brahmi Tamil Brahmi
Child systems	Vatteluttu, Grantha, Pallava
Sister systems	Bhattiprolu script

Tamil-Brahmi, or Tamili, is a variant of the Brahmi script used to write the Tamil language. These are the earliest documents of a Dravidian language, and the script was well established in the Chera and Pandyan states, in what is now Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Sri Lanka. Inscriptions have been found on cave beds, pot sherds, Jar burials, coins, seals, and rings. The language is Archaic Tamil, and led to classical Sangam literature.

Tamil Brahmi differs in several ways from Ashokan Brahmi. It adds several letters for sounds not found in Prakrit: ṉ ṟ ṛ ḷ. Secondly, in many of the inscriptions the inherent vowel has been discarded: A consonant written without diacritics represents the consonant alone, whereas the Ashokan diacritic for long ā is used for both ā and short a in Tamil Brahmi. This is unique to Tamil Brahmi and Bhattiprolu among the early Indian scripts. This appears to be an adaptation to Dravidian phonotactics, where words commonly end in consonants, as opposed to Prakrit, where this never occurs. According to Mahadevan, in the earliest stages of the script the inherent vowel was either abandoned, as above, or the bare consonant was ambiguous as to whether it implied a short a or not. Later stages of Tamil Brahmi returned to the inherent vowel that was the norm in India.

The origins of the Brahmi in general and Tamil Brahmi specifically are unclear. There are number of inscriptions whose dates have not been settled yet. Nevertheless, a number of theories has been put forward with literary, epigraphic and archeological evidence. The received consensus is a 3rd-century "post-Ashokan" dispersal, but that since the year 2000, there have been two serious candidates for a pre-Ashokan date.

The earliest mention of a script for writing the Tamil language is found in the Jaina work Samavayanga Sutta (300 BCE) and Pannavana Sutta (168 BCE) where a script called Damilli is mentioned. In the Buddhist work, Lalitavistara (translated into Chinese in 308 CE), a script called Dravidalipi is mentioned. According to Kamil Zvelebil, Damilli and Dravidalipi are synonymous for Tamil writing. References to writing are also available in early Tamil literature. Tolkappiyam in stanza 16 and 17 mentions dots added to consonants. The author of Tolkappiyam displays awareness of a writing system and the graphic system as he knew it corresponds with later writing systems. Other works such as Tirukkural mentions writing using the word ezhuttu.Cilappatikaram mentions kannezhuttu that was used to mark merchandise imported at the port emporium of Kaveripattinam, it also mentions kannezhuttalar or scribes. A reference to palm leaf manuscript writing is found in Nalatiyar and Purananuru mentions a hero stone that has the name of the hero etched in it. Based on the literature analysis, Kamil Zvelebil believes writing was known to Tamil people at least from the 3rd century BCE.