ellis-inscription

எல்லீசன் கல்வெட்டு
-------------------------------
 
பாரெலா நிழற்று பரியரிக் குடையோன்

 வாரியுஞ் சிறுக வருபடைக் கடலோன்

ஆர்கடலதிர வார்த்திடுங் கப்பலோன்

மரக்கல வாழ்வின் மற்றொப்பிலாதோன்

தனிப்பெருங் கடற்குத் தானே நாயகன்

தீவுகள் பலவும் திதி பெறப் புரப்போன்

 தன்னடி நிழலிற் றங்கு பல்லுயிர்க்குந்

தாயிலு மினியன் றந்தையிற் சிறந்தோன்

 நயநெறி நீங்கா நாட்டார் மொழிகேட்

டுயர்செங் கோலும் வழாமை யுள்ளோன்

மெய்மறை யொழுக்கம் வீடுறா தளிப்போன்

 பிரிதன்னிய சுகோத்திய விபானியமென்னு

மும்முடி தரித்து முடிவி லாத

 திக்கனைத் துந்தனிச் சக்கர நடாத்தி

யொருவழிப் பட்ட வொருமை யாளன்

வீர சிங்கா தனத்து வீற்றிருந் தருளிய

 சோர்சென் னுமூன்றா மரசற்கு 57ஆம் ஆண்டில்

காலமுங் கருவியுங் கருமமுஞ் சூழ்ந்து

வென்றியோடு பொருள்புகழ் மேன்மேற் பெற்று

 கும்பினியார் கீழ்ப்பட்ட கனம்பொ ருந்திய

யூவெலயத் தென்பவ னாண்ட வனாக

சேர சோழ பாண்டி யாந்திரங்

 கலிங்க துளுவ கன்னாட கேரளம்

பணிக்கொடு துரைத்தனம் பண்ணுநாளில்

சயங்கொண்ட தொண்டிய சாணுறு நாடெனும்

 ஆழியில் இழைத்த வழகுறு மாமணி

குணகடன் முதலாக குட கடலளவு

நெடுநிலம் தாழ நிமிர்ந்திடு சென்னப்

 பட்டணத்து எல்லீசன் என்பவன் யானே

பண்டார காரிய பாரம் சுமக்கையில்

 புலவர்கள் பெருமான் மயிலையம் பதியான்

தெய்வப் புலமைத் திருவள் ளுவனார்

திருக்குறள் தன்னில் திருவுளம் பற்றிய்

 “இருபுனலும் வாய்ந்த மலையும் வருபுனலும்

வல்லரணும் நாட்டிற் குறுப்பு”

என்பதின் பொருளை என்னுள் ஆய்ந்து

ஸ்வஸ்திஶ்ரீ ஶாலிவாஹந ஶகாப்த ௵ 1740ச் செல்லாநின்ற இங்க்லிஸ் ௵ 1818ம் ஆண்டில் ப்ரபவாதி  ௵-ம்க்கு மேற்  செல்லாநின்ற பஹுதாந்ய ௵-த்தில் வார திதி நக்ஷத்ர யோக கரணம் பார்த்து ஶுப திநத்தி லிதனோடி ருபத்தேழு துரவு கண்டு புண்ணியாஹவாசநம் பண்ணுவித்தேன்

1818

ko-balachandran-ias

Dravidian Languages written in Grantha script

Tamil is written in the following scripts: Tamil, Arabic, Tamil Grantha and Roman.
It can also transliterated into Devanagari script in Unicode.

A 1289 AD example of Tamil being written in Grantha script:
[Begin Quote]
Curiously enough we find a copper-plate grant containing an inscription having Sanskrit and Tamil sections both written in the Grantha script [11]. The date of the record falls in 1289 AD. The Tamil portion is entirely transliterated in Grantha script following only the written form and *not* the form of pronunciation.

[11] Ep. Ind., XXXVII, pp. 175 ff
**
[End Quote]
(from pg. 243. “Convertibility of surds and sonants”—historical evidence,
Dr. K. G. Krishnan (Dept. of Epigraphy, Mysore, India)- Indo-Iranian Journal, 1972).

The Grantha script is what gave rise to both the modern Tamil and Malayalam scripts.
The earlier (e.g., 18-19th centuries) Grantha script has minor font variations,
one on the East coast (Tamil Nadu) and another on the West coast (Kerala).

Florian Coulmas, Writing systems: an introduction to their linguistic analysis,
Cambridge University Press, 2003, Page 150




Stanford B. Steever, The Dravidian languages, pg. 45, London: Taylor & Francis, 1998

" Another line of development is reflected in the Chera and Pallava scripts of South India, dating from fifth to eighth centuries CE. This eventually took the form of the Grantha script (from a Sanskrit word meaning 'book'), which predominated especially in the Madras area. A Western variety of Grantha is the ancestor of the modern Malayalam system, and an eastern variety of Grantha was formerly used to write Tamil."

Isaac Taylor (1829-1901), The alphabet: an account of the origin and development
of letters. Vol. 2, page 356,

"From this lapidary alphabet two scripts were developed, a cursive and literary script. The first is represented by the Tamil, while the other has developed into the Grantha or 'book' alphabet used by the Tamil Brahmans for the Sanskrit transcriptions of their sacred books. From it are derived two vernacular alphabets which are used on the Malabar coast; one is the Tulu Grantha (line 23), and the other the Malayalam, from which several characters were borrowed by the Christians of St. Thomas in order to supplement the Syriac (Karshuni) alphabet which they obtained from the Nestorian missionaries (see vol. i., p. 293.)
The great Tamil alphabet occupies the extreme south of India."

Student's Brittanica India, 5 volumes, Dale Hoiberg and Indu Ramchandani,
pg. 349 has the entry on Malayalam language.

Of particular interest is the fact that Malayalam is also written using Tamil Grantha script.

pg. 349, Malayalam language:
"The earliest record of the language is an inscription dated to AD c. 830. An early extensive influx of Sanskrit words influenced the Malayalam script (derived from the Grantha script, itself derived from Brahmi): it has letters to represent all the Sanskrit sounds, besides the Dravidian sounds. The language also uses a script called Kolezhuttu (Rod script), which is derived from the Tamil writing system. The Tamil Grantha script is used as well."

Dravidian letters in Grantha script - history

Some social factors that Dravidian letters came to be written inside Grantha script are described by prof. S. N. Sadasivan that may be of interest.

Dr. S. N. Sadasivan, A social history of India,
A. P. H. Publishing Co., N. Delhi, 2002, pg. 604

" Malayalam rose from the status of a dialect to an independent language in the 9th century. The first script of Malayalam, as a dialect, was Vattezuttu (circular
or spherical writing) of Njanamonam which was the contribution of Buddhists. Between the 3rd century AD and the 9th century, Vattezuttu was the only alphabet and even in the early part of the 19th century, it was used for official records. By the 15th century, another script came into vogue, the Kolezuttu (long script) which however could not replace the Vattezuttu nor could it become popular. A third group of letters the Grantha-lipi (book script) was said to have been introduced at the instance of the Btrhamins because they wanted to dissociate from the Buddhist Vattezuttu and the later Kolezuttu obviously of non-Brahmin origin.

However by the 16th century the non-Brahmins, the Sudras and the Ezhavas in particular, avidly learned the Grantha lipi and used it for extensive writing. Modern Malayalam script is the reformed Grantha letters popularized by Tunchat
Ezhuttaccan."

A. C. Burnell, Elements of South Indian Paleography, 1874. page 37, “The origin of this Tamil alphabet is apparent at first sight; it is a brahmanical adaptation of the Grantha letters corresponding to the old VaTTezuttu, from which, however, the last four signs (LLL, LL, RR and NNN) have been retained.”

Tamil Grantha is a script capable of writing both Dravidian (Tamil, Malayalam, ...) and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit, Prakrit, ...) languages. For the Grantha being used for early Malayalam - a Dravidian language -, old Latin book (1772) Alphabetum grandonico-malabaricum sive samscrudonicum. Clemente, di Gesù; Giovanni Cristoforo Amaduzzi, 1772 Latin Book xxviii, 100 p. viii fold. pl. 19 cm.

P. Visalakshy, The Grantha script, Dravidian Linguistics Association, St. Xavier's College, University of Kerala, 2003.

Page 68:

" Considering the shape of letters, Grantha script can be classified into two varieties, the square and the round, The square variety was more popular among the Hindus and the round variety among the Jains of Arcot and Chennai regions. The famous work 'Alphabetum Grondonico Malabaricum' printed in 1772 in the Polyglot Press, Rome is in the Grantha script and the letters of this work are of the square variety. Depending upon the geographical variations, the Grantha script can be broadly classified into four types: the Pallava, the Cola, the Pandya and the Tulu-Malayalam."

For Grantha being used for writing Tamil, T. P. Meenakshisundaram's, J. R. Marr,
J. Filliozat references.

PuLLi, a diacritic in Grantha

PuLLi, a dot is a very old diacritic in Tamil Grantha script. Its use as a reducer diacritic for reducing vowel-length or inherent vowel /a/ from akshara (syllable) is defined in many Tamil grammar books across centuries for the last 2000+ years. This posting is to documentation the PuLLi (dot) diacritic in Grantha. This ancient PuLLi diacritic for generating short e and o vowels can be contrasted with the situation in Devanagari script where various NEW solutions are tried - for example, European tilde or breve signs are imported today. But in Tamil Grantha, this is NOT the case. A. C. Burnell, Elements of South Indian Paleography, 1874. page 37, “The origin of this Tamil alphabet is apparent at first sight; it is a brahmanical adaptation of the Grantha letters corresponding to the old VaTTezuttu, from which, however, the last four signs (LLL, LL, RR and NNN) have been retained.”

An example of PuLLi diacritic on Grantha letters in print:

Govt. of India proposal on Grantha (L2/10-426) has a Nukta combining sign, which is an import from Persia, at U+1133C which is to help make Grantha letters write English letters, Z, W and F in proper transliteration. Nukta is brand new for Grantha, and not found at all in old books and manuscripts. Also the proposal has the native and much more ancient puLLi diacritic for short E and O vowels. The puLLi “dot” diacritic has been applied on Grantha letters in print long ago. For example, see the book, T. S. Naraya Sastry, Bhoja Charitram (Mylapore, Madras, 1900) (available at Google books also):

(p. xiii)



śṛṇudhvam gadatō mē 'dya

(p. xiv)



vyāghravat vyagara karmakṛt ||

(p. xiii)



asabhyaiḥ prāviśan niśi |

Normally, the PuLLi diacritic will be missing in South India, as creating a hole in palm leafs will destroy the writing material sooner. Hence it is normally left out, but is employed in print.

For long, Tamil letters have been added in Brahmi scripts to write Dravidian properly. This is acknowledged in Unicode encoding, for example, Brahmi encoding in Unicode allots separate code points for Tamil/Dravidian letters. In addition to the “vowel reducer” diacritic, Tamil puLLi to generate short /e/ and /o/ vowels in Brahmi in Unicode encoding, S. Baums and A. Glass added the Tamil letters in Brahmi code chart in Unicode (pg. 8-9, L2/07-342):

“For the representation of sounds particular to Dravidian, the makers of Old Tamil Brahmi added four new consonant signs to the repertoire of Brahmi: LLL, LL, RR and
NNN. The second of these, LL, is phonetically identical (a retroflex lateral) to the LL that somewhat later appears in north-Indian Brahmi for the writing of Sanskrit, and that also occurs in the Bhattiprolu inscriptions. Moreover, both the Tamil Brahmi and the Bhattiprolu LL are graphically derived from the regular letter l, the former by adding a hook to the lower right of l, the latter by mirroring l horizontally (while the north-Indian LL is derived from the letter DD). Old Tamil, Bhattiprolu and north-Indian LL should therefore all be encoded as 11031. Additional code points are provided for LLL, RR and NNN in the positions 11072 to 11074.”

“A special device was introduced for the marking of vowelless consonants, used both for Sanskrit and Tamil. In Sanskrit, this sign is called virama and is first attested in manuscripts of the first century CE. In Tamil, it is called puLLi and is attested in inscriptions from the second century CE (Mahadevan 2003, p. 198).” (pg. 4).

“In the second century BCE, as Brahmi spread southwards, speakers of Old Tamil became acquainted with it and adapted it to the writing of their own language.” (pg. 7).

“PuLLi takes the form of a dot above or in the upper part of the akSara. In addition to this normal virama function, puLLi is also used with the vowels e and o in order to mark them as short: in contrast to Sanskrit and most Middle-Indo-Aryan dialects, the Dravidian languages have short as well as long e and o phonemes.” In the Brahmi encoding, puLLi function and its shape “dot” to reduce long /e/ and /o/ to short vowels is allowed in Unicode (S. Baums and A. Glass, L2/07-342, pg. 8, L2/07-342).

A 13th century example of Tamil written in Grantha orthography.

" Curiously enough we find a copper-plate grant containing an inscription having Sanskrit and Tamil sections both written in the Grantha script [11]. The date of the record falls in 1289 AD. The Tamil portion is entirely transliterated in Grantha script following only the written form and *not* the form of pronunciation
*."

[11] Ep. Ind., XXXVII, pp. 175 ff
**
(pg. 243. “Convertibility of surds and sonants”—historical evidence, K. G. Krishnan - Indo-Iranian Journal, 1972)


Table giving Visual Representation of short E and O and the corresponding vowel signs
in Grantha, Devanagari and Tamil scripts:


It should be noted that Tamil E and O differ from the older Grantha E and O because of the reform introduced by a Jesuit priest from Italy. "The famous Jesuit Beschi (1704-1774) is the author of a great improvement in Tamil orthography – the distinction between long and short e & o.” (pg. 37A. C. Burnell, Elements of South Indian Paleography, 1874).

Even after Beschi in mid-18th century, PuLLi diacritic for short E and O vowels
and vowel signs continue to be used. For example,
Ancient and Modern Alphabets of the Popular Hindu Alphabets of the Southern
Peninsula of India, Capt Henry Harkness, 1837, Royal Asiatic Society, pp. 1 & 2.




Grantha has 2 fonts in Unicode blocks: James Kass (PUA) & Elmar Kniprath (Bengali). Both of them have short E and O vowels and matra signs with PuLLi dot diacritic. See for example, Kniprath's font writing south Indian place names:

llla

Transliteration:




This is a scan of page 145 of the Jaiminiiya-prayoga-vivaraNa by A. Rangasvaami Ayyangaar, printed in grantha and Tamil scripts at Kumbhakonam in 1923. Here you see a Jaiminiiya Saamaveda saaman printed in grantha. The entire text on this page is in Sanskrit and grantha, but because in the Jaiminiiya branch of Saamaveda surviving only in South India, the Sanskrit word iDaa is rendered iZaa, it is necessary to use the corresponding Tamil-Malayalam letter ழ to express this. You see it in the middle of the third line from the bottom on this page - Asko Parpola, University of Helsinki.

This is the east coast variety of Grantha script. In west coast variety, the letter LLLA and is Chillu LLL is extensively employed.
[will add pictures]

See Grantha script as applied to a Dravidian language (Malayalam):

Alphabetum grandonico-malabaricum sive samscrudonicum.
Clemente, di Gesù (1731-1782); Giovanni Cristoforo Amaduzzi(1740-1792),
1772, Latin Book xxviii, 100 p. viii fold. pl. 19 cm.
Publication: Romae, typis Sac. congregationis de propag. fide,
Year: 1772

Tamil is written in Grantha script (1289 CE) onwards:
[Begin Quote]

" Curiously enough we find a copper-plate grant containing an inscription
having Sanskrit and Tamil sections both written in the Grantha script [11].
The date of the record falls in 1289 AD. The Tamil portion is entirely
transliterated in Grantha script following only the written form and
*not*the form of pronunciation
*." *
**
[11] Ep. Ind., XXXVII, pp. 175 ff
**
[End Quote]

Tirukkural

Grantha code chart

The following is the Grantha Code chart recommended by Government of India for encoding in Unicode.