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APPENDIX D.
169
of Tamil
India but has successfully established the fact that Vatteluttu is derived from the Brāhmi variety of the Asokan alphabet. We can therefore take it, as proved that the most ancient Pandyan script Vatteluttu was derived from the Brāhmi inscriptions of the Madura, Ramnad and Tinnevelly districts. Epigraphists are inclined to assign the cnd of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. for the date of the Brāhmi inscriptions. This furnishes us with the lower limit for the period of any The period Tamil literåry activity. The upper limit mav Kterary
activity : its be said to be furnished by the Vatteluttu limits. inscription of the Pandyan king Jatilavarman Parantakan (last quarter of the 8th century A.D.), the earliest known record yet discovered written in Vatteluttu. In between these two limits must be sought the period of literary activity known as the Sangam Age. According to the orthodox school of Tamil scholars the sage Agastya was responsible for the evolution of the Tamil language and one of his twelve disciples Tolkāppiyar wrote the famous treatise on grammar, Tolkāppiyam. This grammarian is also believed to have been a member of the first and second Academies each of which existed for hundreds of years. Then was founded the last or the third Academy in which time more than 25,000 lines had been composed. Divested of legend and myth we can reduce the traditional account to its proper limits thus. Long before Tolkāppiyar there was a
