Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the earliest times to the sixth century C.E; Volume 1. Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions.

Early Tamil Epigraphy represents the culmination of Iravatham Mahadevan’s lifework on the early Tamil and Vatteluttu cave inscriptions dating from approximately the earliest times to the sixth century C. E. Mahadevan has long been acknowledged as the most prominent expert in this field, so it comes as no surprise that he now presents us with a comprehensive and definitive presentation of this important corpus. Mahadevan’s claim that “the cave inscriptions of Tamil Nadu, which have generally been regarded as obscure, can now be read” is fully justified, as his edition gives convincing interpretations for nearly every word in the corpus. The two main obstacles to their interpretation in the past, namely “the lack of reliable texts and unfamiliarity with the orthographic rules governing the inscriptions” (ibid.), have now been removed by Mahadevan’s energetic and comprehensive fieldwork and by his authoritative analysis of the orthographic systems, respectively. The CICT project team constituted by CPPE started the work in December 2007 and successfully completed most of the fieldwork by the end of 2010. I was happy to inaugurate the work at Mamandur, but could not participate in further fieldwork due to health problems except once at Pulankurichi in 2010. The present publication marks the culmination of my study of Tamil epigraphy extending over more than half a century (1958 – 2012). Looking back over this long period, I remember with gratitude Dr. C. Sivaramamurti, who initiated me into the discipline of epigraphy, Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, who suggested to me to take up the research on the cave inscriptions of Tamilnadu, and K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer, the founder of Tamil-Brāhmī epigraphy, whom I had the good fortune to meet in 1966 and receive his blessings for my successful decipherment of the Tamil-Brāhmī cave inscriptions of the Caṅkam age at Mangulam and Pugalur. It is time to hand over the baton to younger scholars in the field.
727 pages; illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps (colour) ; 29 cm