diphthongs, and all the others simple. The original Tamil vowels are the three deictics. ƒ, …, and ‡, or a, i and u.

     The six surds or hard consonants are neither voiced nor so hard as the Sanskrit voiceless unaspirates, unless doubled. They become less hard in a medial or final position, and sonant or voiced when preceded by a nasal. This has been the case from the very beginning. It is absurd to think, as some Sanskritists do, still being under the illusion that the Tamilians are immigrants from the Mediterranean region, that the Aryan voiced consonants became voiceless in Tamil.

     Tamil is devoid of aspirates and such consonantal combinations as Œk, ½c, –—, nth (as in month), mp, and nt. No Tamil word begins with a consonant unless it is syllabic, and ends in a hard consonant. The comparative hardness of an initial surd is due to accent or emphasis, which generally falls on the first syllable.

    This sort of simplicity of the Tamil phonology is quite natural to Tamil, and best accounted for by its earliness in the history of human speech.

     The Tamil alphabet seems to have been written in two different systems of characters in ancient times, one, the cursive, meant for writing on the palmyra leaf with an iron stylus, the other, the linear, adapted for inscribing on stone slabs and copper plates. Tolkƒppiyam and Nann‡l refer only to the cursive system. The latter, a work of the 13th century A.D. says, that the Tamil alphabetical characters of the time were the same as of old, with the difference that the diacritical marks of those for short e and short o were originally dots which were removed later.

     The Grantha character was derived from the cursive variety of the Tamil character, which existed even before the First Academy. Respecting the Deva-nƒgari character, Monier Williams writes, “The oldest known inscription, in Sanskrit is on a rock at Junƒ-garh in Kathiƒwƒr. It is called the Rudra-dƒman inscription, and dates from the second century A.D. It is not in Nƒgari but in old inscription letters. The Bower MS. of about 400 A.D. shows