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Tamil-Brahmi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tamil-Brahmi was an early script used to write Tamil characters. It is also known as the Tamili script. It evolved from the Brahmi script of north India. The best known examples of the Tamil-Brahmi scripts are the Asokan inscription found in South India and the earliest surviving inscriptions in Tamil found at Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu. It has recently been tentatively suggested by archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India that graffiti etched into a potsherd tentatively dated to the 5th century BC is an example of a very rudimentary form of Tamil writing.[1] Early Tamil Brahmi, unlike Asokan Brahmi, had a system to distinguish between pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel. In addition, early Tamil-Brahmi used slightly different vowel markers, and had extra characters to represent letters not found in Sanskrit.
Tamil-Brahmi eventually evolved into the Vatteluttu script.
The Brahmi script used in the Asokan editcs was adapted and modified to suit the Tamil phonetic system. The script was changed to accommodate the requirements unique to the Tamil language, with the omission of letters for sounds not present in the Tamil language and by additions to represent sounds in Tamil that are not available in Brahmi. Some of the letters were also modified with a special diacritic mark, such as the dot (pulli).
- Champakalakshmi, R. A magnum opus on Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions, [1]
- Mahadevan, Iravatham, Orality to literacy: Transition in Early Tamil Society , Frontline, Volume 20 - Issue 07, March 29 - April 11, 2003
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