Recent discoveries of Tamil Brahmi writing in Tamil Nadu could force experts to revisit their theories of how writing arose in India.
Tamil Brahmi writing has been discovered on pottery and utensils, burial urns and as rock engravings across the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu. A discovery at Porunthal village near Palani (Subramaniam, 2009) and a supposed finding at Adichanallur (Subramanian T. , `Rudimentary Tamil-Brahmi script’ unearthed at Adichanallur, 2005), near Tirunelveli, may completely up-end our understanding of how writing evolved in the Indian sub-continent.
A cist-burial was excavated in 2009 at Porunthal. The grave goods included a jar with paddy, 7500 beads of carnelian, steatite, quartz and agate, iron stirrups, iron swords, knives and what is of most importance to us – two ring-stands inscribed with the same Tamil-Brahmi script reading