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386
THE ALPHABET
Vatteluttu Character
This script offers many problems. The term means "round hand" in modern Malayalam; it may either indicate a distinction from Koleluttu, or "sceptre hand" (see below) or from the common Tamil writing, or alternatively it may be a simple description of the script, as practically all the letters are circular (Fig. 154, col. 43, and Fig. 177-178). The script is an ideal current hand. All its letters, with perhaps one exception, are made with a single stroke from left to right, and are mostly inclined towards the left.
2030 60330 1242
22
༢༥
2 LECTUROUTE
2123004433
TO
Yuuge inyu
23523
Va4u3zpras
DUSTLANTA
C344432033 CETIC301
211233 2QLLY ή του εταείε
Fig. 177
Part of an inscription written in a kind of Vatteluttu mixed with Grantha, attributed to the ninth century A.D.
According to Burnell, the Vatteluttu is the original Tamil character, and it may also be termed the Pandyan writing, "as its use extended over the whole of that kingdom at its best period" and it "was once used in all that part of the peninsula south of Tanjore, and also in S. Malabar and Travancore where it still exists though in exceedingly limited use, and in a more modern form." Burnell also held that all the early Tamil works were written in this script, and that from the eleventh century A.D., after
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Fig. 178-Part of a grant to Jews at Kochin, attributed by Burnell to the middle of the eighth century A.D., and by Buehler to the tenth or eleventh century
the conquest of the Cholas, it was gradually supplanted by the Tamil character; it disappeared from that country by the fifteenth century. In Malabar it remained in general use among the Hindus up to the end of the seventeenth century, and it was used even later, in the Koleluttu form, by Hindu sovereigns for writing their grants. The Mappilas of the neighbourhood of Tellicherry and in the islands, used this character until modern times, when it was superseded by a modified Arabic alphabet,
