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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(NOVEMBER, 1924
almost identical. The other form is in Parkara Iravi, Marañchadaiyan of the eighth century, the Pârttivapuram and Mâmpalli inscriptions of the tenth century.
There are five or six varieties of y in the subjoined plate, from which we cannot draw any conclusion whatever.
Evidence in support of an early date from the Vatteluttu characters.--Let us take the charactor lu. The symbol l is quite visible in the lu of Vira Raghava, Rajasekhara, and in two inscriptions of Pårkara Iravi, and is fairly visible in the Cochin plates of Parkara Iravi. Vide lu of cols. 1, 3, 4 and 5 and 14 of ools. 1 and 4, The symbol l is uniform in all inscriptions, except in the Paliyam plates and the Miohirai plates (cols. 20, 22).
Originally lu must have been a l with some additional mark, and in course of time have changed and lost all resemblance to l. We can clearly trace the development. In the Cochin plates of Parkara Iravi the additional mark of u, instead of ooming
down through the last lino,
y
y
; made a bond at the top and came down
in another line. This is the only difference between the Vira Raghava lu and a certain variety of the Parkara lu which underwent another change. The bending of l gave place
to a single line
y
o
. That is the form in which this character appears in other
inscriptions. None, I hope, will gainsay this, and contend that the symbol lu, which has no resemblance whatever with 1, is the original form. It is not true with any other symbol of the Vatteluttu alphabet, nor with any symbol of any alphabet. In all alphabets, as well as Vatteluttu, where the symbols have infections, it is invariably made by adding some mark to the symbol in its a form.
Some may argue that though the symbol le of Vira Raghava and Rajasekhara is the original form, it does not necessarily follow that those inscriptions are earlier than all the others, in which a later form of lu appears. Original forms and later forms may eo-exist for gome oenturies, and therefore an earlier form may be found in a comparatively late inscription. But we should bear in mind that the Vira Raghava plate has the symbol lu five times and I once ; all uniformly written. The Rajasekhara plate has lu twice, and both uniformly written. The PArkara Iravi inscriptions have the different stages of lu. The character Id employed in the Perunna inscription B of Parkara Iravi (sixth century) is given in coli 4, which is exactly like that of the Vira Raghava plate, and the symbol lu employed twice in the Tirukkôțitt&nam inscription C. of PArkara Iravi is given in col. 4, in which I is quite visible as in the Vira Raghava plate. Bat in the same inscription a different lu, as we find in col. 7, is used five times in which I is not at all visible. I have read all the published facsimiles of the Vatteluttu inscriptions and a very large number of unpublished inscriptions, and I found this lu only in one more inscription, viz., that of Marañohadaiyan (eighth century) in the Tirukkurrålam temple (No. 480 of the collection of 1917 preserved in the Madras Office of Epigraphy). It is exactly like the Vira Raghava lu. Of the several inscriptions of Marafichadaiyan now preserved, we find this original form of lu only in one inscription, and therefore we may assume that this form of lu had almost gone out of use during the days of Maranchadaiyan in the eighth century. Nowhere else did I find this original lu. We find this original form of lu only in five inscriptions, one written at Cranganore and one at Tiruvalla,
