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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
form is very considerable; the angles are rounded, and the vowel signs and compound consonants more irregularly connected, so that a person acquainted with Grantham, and consequently able to read the square Aryam character, can scarcely decipher the round hand. As the Grantham was originally formed for writing the Sanskrit only, all letters purely Tamil, and consequently not found in the Nagari, were rejected, but these have been necessarily restored in the Aryam, and retain nearly their proper Tamil form: these letters are R, L, and N only used as a final, or in connection with y. Separate forms, which do not exist in the Grantham, have also been devised for the finals R, L, and L, on account of their frequent occurrence.1
The Kôlěluttu is, as its name imports, the writing of the palace, kolu in Tamil being equivalent to the Hindustani term darbár; in this character all grants, patents, decrees, and, in general, all papers that can be considered records of Government are drawn up. While Keralam was independent these papers were in the Malayalma; but in Mashika m, the country at present under the dominion of the Travankor Government, Tamil is, and always has been, used for this purpose. The Vattěluttu, the clipped or abbreviated letter, is the writing of the forum; conveyances, bonds, legal instruments, and. generally, all transactions between man and man, necessary to be recorded, are written in this character. The two characters have each the same number of letters as the Tamil alphabet; the forms of the letters are nearly the same in both, and are either variations, all angles being rounded, or, as the name of the latter imports, abbreviations of the Tamil,
The Tamil character, though perfectly competent to the expression of the language to which it belongs, is incapable of representing with precision the sounds and combinations of sound of the Sanskrit. To remedy this defect, the Brahmans, on their establishment in Southern India, had but two methods at their option-to introduce the Nagarl, if it then existed, or to invent a new character. They preferred the latter. (An error.) They analyzed the Tamil characters, and supplied the symbols wanting by recombining the lines and curves of which they were formed. The alphabet thus constructed they called. Grantham, which, derived from grath, 'close-shut,' among other signi fications means a collection of words, a writing,' and is synonymous also with the term sástram, 'a science,' or 'a treatise on any science.' The Sanskrit language is by Tamil writers, whether Brahmans or Sadras, always called vada moli, the northern speech,' but it is universally known by its appropriate epithets Sanskrit and Girvina; if, however, a Tamil Brahman is asked, in what Tanguage a Sanskrit book is written, his answer will invariably be in the Grantham,' alluding to the character, and conceiving that the inevitable deduction must be that the language is Sanskrit. Hence the mistake of Europeans who speak of the Grantham language and the Grandonica lingua, and among others of Ziegenbalg, who in general is accurate, when he says in a letter to La Croze, "Beammhanum lingame propriæ nomen est Grantham, neque a Brammhanibus ipsis unquam aliter vocatur." In the dissertation prefixed to his Sanskrit grammar, entitled Siddhar@pam, p. 7, Paulinus à St. Bartholomeo says, "Ultimum denique alphabetum est Samscrudamico-Malabaricum nostrum anno 1772 Romæ typis
[NOVEMBER, 1878.
but they differ from each other and from the Tamil very materially in the mode of joining the signs of the vowels to the consonants, and in the manner of writing. (Note B, p. 287.)
To exhibit with precision the difference between the Malayalma and the Sen and Kodun Tamil, I shall make the following comparisons :-Of terms derived in the two modern dialects from the pure or ancient Tamil; Of words derived from the Sanskrit; Of the declension of the noun: Of the conjugation of the verb; Of idiom. This arrangement will comprehend every variation, whether in the pronunciation or forms of words, in the idiom, or in the use of terms by those which are obsolete in one dialect being retained in the other. Comparison of terms in the two dialects derived from pure Tamil.
Like the other dialects of Southern India, the terms of the Malayâlma might be arranged under the three principal classes of Tatsamam, pure Sanskrit terms, Tadbhavam, Sanskrit derivatives, and Dééyam, native terms, and the latter might be again subdivided into Tamil Tatsamam, pure Tamil, and Tamil Tadbhavam, Tamil derivatives. In the Dissertation on the Telugu, the Tadbhavam terms of that language are distributed into classes, according as they are derived direct or through the medium of the several Prakrits; of the latter there are few, if any, in Malayalma, and the former do not abound. Those which occur may be more properly referred to the Tamil than the Malay)ma; thus simbah, the sign Leo, becomes in Tamil, by the necessary substitution of g for h,-the latter not being found in the language,-singam, and in Malayalma singam and chingam; thus, also, vrisha
St. Congregationis impressum. Hoc obtinet in Regio Canara, Carnate, Concam, Maypoor, Madare, Tanjaur, in tota ora Malabarica et Coromandelica, et hoc soli lingus sacre Samscrudamic proprium ibidem est, ac in libris Brahminicis reperitur." This Paulinus asserts of the Aryam character of Malayalam, which obtains only in Kanara and Malabar; he evidently confounds it with the Grantham, from which it is indeed derived, but from which it materially differs. From the Grantham may also be deduced the Singalese and Burma alphabets; while the origin of the Kôlěluttu, Vatteluttu, and the characters of Java and Sumatra, all nearly connected, is referable immediately to the Tamil. I am not aware that any European writer has ever given the Kolěluttu or Vattěluttu alphabets: Anquetil Duperron notices them both, but with so little intelligence that, though he gives a copy of the ancient plates containing the privileges granted to the Jews, which is written in the Vatteluttu, he does not recognize the character, and affirms that he could procure no person capable of deciphering it. That Duperron might know the names of these alphabets, without being at all acquainted with the characters themselves, is very probable, but it is somewhat surprising that he should have found any difficulty in procuring the explanation of a document written in a character 80 generally known. A transcript of a letter in the Vatteluttu taken from the preface to Van Rheede's Hortus Malabaricus is engraved in the Alphabetum GrandonicoMalabaricum, where it is ridiculously called 'infimum scribendi genus,' because not applicable to writing the Sanskrit, but no explanation of the character is given. Fide p. 12. [See Ind. Ant. vol. I. p. 229.]
