தமிழ் - Dravidanin mozhi: AN OVERVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE TAMIL SCRIPT

It would be appropriate and useful to supplement our presentation of an overview of the Tamil Language and it's literature, with a broad overview of the evolution of the Tamil script. There are enough indications that the Tamil language originated and evolved independently of the Indo-Aryan Sanskritic stream of the North, in both it's spoken and written forms. Of course, theircoexistence over the millennia did lead to much mutual influence, but this does not obscure their distinctiveness. Both Sanskrit and Tamil are unique among the languages of the world, not only for being among the oldest, but also the earliest to reach the highest stage of development with a comprehensive and scientific grammar and a literature of phenomenal range and depth. Scholars will find it difficult to choose between their respective excellences.

While the earliest extant Tamil inscriptions, whether written in Asokan Brahmi, or in the local Tamil script, are set in the early centuries of the Christian era, scholars have perforce to look for additional evidence for details of earlier forms of Tamil writing only in the earlier extant Tamil literature. The earliest extant work is the Tolkappiam, the celebrated work of Tamil Grammar, often considered the Tamil counter-part of Panini's work on Sanskrit Grammar, and considered by tradition to originate in the Sangam period of the centuries prior to the start of the Christian era.

The Tolkappiam (according to the commentator, Ilampuranar) is comprised 1595 Verses spread over three Books, each in turn, containing nine Chapters. Their comprehensive content dealing with every aspect of the structure and usage of the language does quite certainly point to the language having evolved to a high degree of sophistication over several prior centuries, or perhaps millenia. The work commences with a very detailed account of the letters of the alphabet, the way their sounds originated from the throat, and the rules and sequences in which the letters were joined to form words. The first Chapter of the First Book of the Tolkappiam is significantly entitled , which refers to letters of the alphanbet, and which would normally imply both their spoken and written forms. The very first verse of this Chapter runs thus :

Translated, the verse reads : " The letters are said to be from 'a' to 'n' thirty in number, excluding three whose use are dependent on the others"

The Tolkappiam itself has an explicit reference to writing in Book - 2, Chapter -1, Verse -60, where it refers to the inscription on commemorative stones of the name and valour of warriors who distinguished themselves in battle. This unique Tamil tradition persisted for long and such stones dated to later centuries have indeed been found. But we are yet to get direct cliching physical evidence, not resting on indirect surmise or inference, of how the writing actually looked at the time the Tolkappiam was composed.

The earliest extant written forms of Tamil are in the Brahmi script or in a local Tamil script in a form called the va÷te¸uttu ( , meaning rounded writing) Two other names for the Tamil script found in the earliest extant Tamil literature are kaõõe¸uttu
referred to in the Silappadikaram) and also suggestive of the rounded shape, andkÌle¸uttu , suggestive of use of a stylus, and referred to in the Kural). In a Tamil article entitled "Tamil Stone Inscriptions", in the Silver Jubilee Souvenir of the Delhi Tamil Sangam, Professor C.Govindarajan provides the following two illustrations to show how the Tamil va÷te¸uttu ( ôìªâìÇêÐÊ ) was quite different from the Tamil Brahmi, and also suggest that it was indeed the authentic written form of ancient Tamil.

1. Tamil text in Sangam Tamil Rock inscription at Thirunathar - probably 4th. Century AD
2. Tamil text in Asokan Tamil Brahmi - rock inscription at Sittanavasal probably 4th. Century AD
3. The following illustrations that follow show evolution of Tamil in it's later forms and the influence of the Grantha script that was developed in the South that gave access to Sanskrit to scholars who were not familiar with Brahmi and it's later successor scripts like Nagari. It will be seen that from the 8th. Century onwards Tamil in it's modern form becomes increasingly recognizable.
Tamil text in 8th. Century AD Tamil with Grantha influence - Thirukaruppur
4. Tamil alphabet in 8th. Century AD - Inscription of Varaguna Pandyan Tamil in the modern form is here becoming more recognizable
5. Tamil alphabet in 11th. Century AD - Inscription of Rajendra Chola I Tamil in the modern form becoming even more recognizable