suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> wrote:
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> NYPL catalog tells me it's an 800-page edition of inscriptional Tamil to
> > 600 AD. It's not the sort of thing one can "read"; what is his outline,
> > and how does it differ from any previous treatments of the history of
> > Tamil writing?
>
> "These are reflected in the development of the Tamil-Brahmi in three
> stages (TB I, II and III): Stage I when the inherent a (short-medial
> vowel) was absent in the consonants and the strokes (vowel notations)
> were used for both the short and long medial a, and hence the need
> for the reading of consonants with reference to context and position;
> Stage II when the stroke for medial a marked only the long a; and
> Stage III when the use of diacritics like the pulli was introduced
> for basic consonants and for avoiding ligatures for consonant
> clusters (as in Simhala-Brahmi). The pulli was used also for
> distinguishing the short e and o from the long vowels, for the
> shortened - i and -u (kurriyalikaram and kurriyalukaram) and for the
> unique sound in Tamil called aytam, all of which are unknown to the
> Indo-Aryan ( Prakrit and Sanskrit).
>
> It is the recognition of the absence of the inherent vowel a (short)
> in the early phases, e.g. ma, ka, na with strokes or medial vowel
> notations, which are actually to be read as ma, ka, n (the inverted J
> symbol for the nominal suffix `an' characteristic of Tamil), and the
> addition of the pulli as a diacritic, that provided the key to the
> whole re-decipherment. Herein lies the basic contribution of
> Mahadevan to the study of the script and alphabet. That these
> findings are corroborated by the phonetic rules of the Tolkappiyam is
> significant."
>
> http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2013/stories/20030704000207100.htm

Ah. It's a reinterpretation of the entire corpus according to a new
theory that's at odds with everything else known about Indian epigraphy!
We could see what Richard Salomon says about TB in *Indian Epigraphy*
(Oxford, 1997), and we can wait for reviews of this book.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...