The presence of the characteristic
letter "Ra" confirms that the language is Tamil
A unique Tamil-Brahmi
Inscription on pottery of the second century AD has recently been excavated in
Thailand.
A Thai-French team of
archaeologists, led by Dr. Bérénice Bellina of the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, France, and Praon Silpanth, Lecturer, Silpakorn
University, Thailand, has discovered a sherd of inscribed pottery during their
current excavations at Phu Khao Thong inThailand.
At the request of the archaeologists,
Iravatham Mahadevan, an expert in Tamil Epigraphy, has examined the
inscription. He has confirmed that the pottery inscription is in Tamil and
written in Tamil-Brahmi characters of about the second century AD. Only three
letters have survived on the pottery fragment. They read tu Ra o... ,possibly
part of the Tamil word turavon meaning`monk.'
The presence of the
characteristic letter Ra confirms that the language is Tamil and the script is
Tamil-Brahmi. It is possible that the inscription recorded the name of a
Buddhist monk who travelled to Thailand from Tamil Nadu. This is the earliest
Tamil inscription found so far in South East Asia and attests to the maritime
contacts of the Tamils with the Far East even in the early centuries AD.
Prof. Richard Salomon of
the University of Washington, U.S., an expert in Indian Epigraphy, has made the
following comment on the inscription: "I am happy to hear that the
inscription in question is in fact Tamil-Brahmi, as I had suspected. This is important,
among other reasons, because it presents a parallel with the situation with
Indian inscriptions in Egypt and the Red Sea area. There we find both
Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions and standard-Brahmi insciptions; and we now see the
same in Vietnam and South-East Asia. This indicates that the overseas trade
between India to both the West and the East involved people from the Tamil
country and also other regions."
Iravatham Mahadevan adds:
"Already we know of the existence of a touchstone engraved in Tamil in the
Tamil-Brahmi script of about the third or fourth century AD found in Thailand
and presently kept in a museum in the ancient port city of Khuan Luk Pat in
Southern Thailand. There is every hope that the ongoing excavations of the
Thai-French team will bring up more evidence of ancient contacts between India
and Thailand."
No comments:
Post a Comment