Alphabet Letters
Brahmi Old Tamil Llla 𑀵
Brahmi Letters
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Origin Mature Brahmi is securely attested in the edicts of Ashoka in the middle of the third century BCE, and the script could be read again only after James Prinsep worked out its values in 1837
Old Tamil Llla writes the Tamil sound transliterated with an l and a dot beneath it, a retroflex approximant made with the tongue tip drawn back without touching the roof of the mouth. It is one of the sounds most associated with Tamil among its neighbours, and it is not an Indo-Aryan sound at all, so no Sanskrit or Prakrit text needs a letter for it. The sign belongs to Tamil-Brahmi, the form of the script used in the far south of the subcontinent, where the inventory received from the north was extended with letters for Dravidian sounds it could not otherwise write. It has no equivalent in the northern alphabets, so its presence in an inscription is itself a mark of where the text was cut.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodMany epigraphists derive Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Brahmi's ancestry is disputed among epigraphists. Richard Salomon's Indian Epigraphy (Oxford University Press, 1998) surveys two live positions on the origin of the script attested in the Ashokan inscriptions: one derives Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire; the other holds that it developed inside India itself. The dispute turns on the corpus, since Brahmi is securely attested only from Ashoka's edicts in the middle of the third century BCE onward, first read again by James Prinsep in 1837, and no earlier specimen on either side is securely dated. Both camps compare Brahmi's letterforms against Aramaic and other Semitic scripts using the same paleographic method, and without an intermediate dated example bridging the gap between any proposed ancestor and the Mauryan era script, neither derivation has been shown to fit the evidence better than the other. Origin PeriodOthers argue for a development inside India, and with no securely dated specimen earlier than the edicts the question stays open 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Brahmi's ancestry is disputed among epigraphists. Richard Salomon's Indian Epigraphy (Oxford University Press, 1998) surveys two live positions on the origin of the script attested in the Ashokan inscriptions: one derives Brahmi from a Semitic prototype, most often Aramaic, adapted in the centuries before the Mauryan empire; the other holds that it developed inside India itself. The dispute turns on the corpus, since Brahmi is securely attested only from Ashoka's edicts in the middle of the third century BCE onward, first read again by James Prinsep in 1837, and no earlier specimen on either side is securely dated. Both camps compare Brahmi's letterforms against Aramaic and other Semitic scripts using the same paleographic method, and without an intermediate dated example bridging the gap between any proposed ancestor and the Mauryan era script, neither derivation has been shown to fit the evidence better than the other. Origins
Origin PeriodMature Brahmi is securely attested in the edicts of Ashoka in the middle of the third century BCE, and the script could be read again only after James Prinsep worked out its values in 1837 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Place of OriginThe Indian subcontinent. The Ashokan edicts carry the script from the Gangetic plain across the Deccan to the far south, while the northwest of the same empire wrote in Kharosthi instead 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Origin of the NameThe letter has no traditional name of its own. It is called by its own sound plus the inherent short a, and the form used here is the name the Unicode Standard gives the character 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Sense of the Namethe Tamil retroflex approximant; a Tamil-Brahmi addition for a Dravidian sound 3Tradition: Modern scholarly naming of the Brahmi letters Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceA Tamil-Brahmi letter, added in the southern use of the script for a Dravidian sound that the Brahmi inventory received from the north could not write 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Identity
Script TypeAn abugida: every consonant sign carries an inherent short a, which a vowel mark alters and the virama cancels, so the unit written is the syllable rather than the single sound 1Tradition: Comparative writing systems PositionFirst of the three Old Tamil additions, standing after the thirty-four consonants of the received order 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy How the Letter JoinsConsonants that meet with no vowel between them are written as a conjunct, the second stacked beneath or ligatured to the first, rather than as two separate signs 1Tradition: Comparative writing systems Attributions
Associated SoundA retroflex approximant, made with the tongue tip drawn back without contact; it is transliterated with an l and a dot beneath, and is not an Indo-Aryan sound 2Tradition: Indian epigraphy Transmission
Manuscript TraditionThis letter, added for a sound not found in Sanskrit, is attested in Tamil Brahmi cave inscriptions from around the second century BCE rather than in the Asokan edicts themselves. 2 Learn More
The Sound in the Name of the Language
The name Tamil itself ends in this sound, which is as compact a statement as could be wanted of how closely the letter is identified with the language. Speakers describe it as the sound that marks their speech out from its neighbours, and it is difficult for outsiders to produce: the tongue tip is drawn back towards the roof of the mouth without making contact, so the sound is neither a lateral nor an r though it has something of both, and no Indo-Aryan language has anything like it.
The letter has no counterpart in the alphabets of the north, and its presence in an inscription is therefore direct evidence of where the text was cut. That is unusual. Most of the evidence a palaeographer works with is a matter of degree, the shape of a common letter compared against dated examples, and a sign that simply is not available elsewhere gives a much harder answer.
It is written in modern Tamil and in Malayalam, which shares the sound, and it survives in Malayalam and Tamil alike as one of the letters that mark the southern branch of the family. Sanskrit and Prakrit texts have no use for it at any period, and it is one of the three consonants that Tamil-Brahmi added at the end of the inherited order rather than adapting an existing letter to serve.
Tamil-Brahmi Is Not Brahmi With Three Letters Added
The southern use of the script differs from the northern one in more than its inventory. Tamil-Brahmi handled the inherent vowel differently, and the differences are substantial enough that scholars describe successive orthographic systems within the Tamil-Brahmi material rather than a single practice. In the earliest of them a bare consonant sign is not read with an inherent vowel at all, which inverts the fundamental convention of the northern script, and the vowel that a northern reader would supply automatically is marked instead.
The eventual southern solution was the pulli, a dot placed above a consonant to say that no vowel follows it. That is a genuine innovation and it does the job that the northern scripts later did with a separate vowel-cancelling stroke. Tamil retains it in its modern orthography.
The dating of the earliest Tamil-Brahmi is contested. Proposals have been made on the basis of excavated material at several sites in Tamil Nadu that would place the beginning of the tradition considerably earlier than the conventional account allows, and the arguments turn on archaeological stratigraphy and on radiocarbon determinations rather than on the letters themselves. The atlas records the dispute rather than choosing a side, and an open question states what would settle it.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Originates in Language
The letter exists because Tamil needs it. It was added in the southern use of Brahmi for a retroflex approximant that no Indo-Aryan text has any occasion to write.
Related To
One of the two laterals the inherited order already had. Tamil keeps three laterals apart where Indo-Aryan needs only two, and the third sign was added in the far south for the sound the northern alphabet could not write.
The retroflex lateral of the inherited order, which is a different sound from this one. The tongue makes contact for the received letter and approaches without contact for the Tamil addition.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
When does the Tamil-Brahmi tradition actually begin?
The conventional account places the earliest Tamil-Brahmi cave inscriptions of Tamil Nadu several centuries before the common era, on palaeographic grounds and by comparison with the Ashokan material. Excavations at sites in the region have since been read as supporting a considerably earlier beginning, on the basis of stratigraphy and of radiocarbon determinations from associated deposits rather than from the inscribed objects themselves. The two accounts rest on different kinds of evidence and there is no agreed method for weighing one against the other, so this is not a case of two camps reading one body of evidence in opposite ways; it is a case in which the date has not been established.
What would resolve this Direct dating of the inscribed objects rather than of the deposits around them, together with a published stratigraphic account that ties an inscribed sherd securely to a dated layer, and an independent palaeographic sequence for the southern letters built from the southern material itself rather than calibrated against the northern hands.
South Asian archaeology, radiocarbon dating and Tamil epigraphyDivinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition
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