Hindus there gave it up three or four centuries ago. That is to say, the Vatteluttu and the Grantha-Malayalam alphabets have been in existence side by side for at least the last three or four centuries in a particular part of the ancient Tamil land, the former being used by the pure Tamilians (Malayalis) and the latter by the Aryanized Dravidians. Again, we observe in the Vatteluttu copper plate grants of Jatila Varman, Ravi Varman, Sri Valluvan Kodai and others, that Grantha characters were used freely to express pure Sanskrit words and Vatteluttu for the Tamil ones. All the South Indian alphabets, not excepting the modern Grantha-Tamil, may be traced to the Brahmi script of Upper India. Had Vatteluttu been borrowed and developed from the Brahini, like the Grantha and other alphabets of India from the earliest times, it would be difficult to account for the Tamils alone using both the characters simultaneously in their inscriptions. This anamoly is nowhere to be found outside the Tamil country. And this one fact, com. bined with the other considerations set forth in the previous paragraphs, must lead one to conclude that Vatteluttu had an indigenous origin, and that the Brahmi characters might have been understood and even largely used by the Brahmans, Buddhists and Jains, while the rest of the people in the Chera and Pandya countries made use of the Vatteluttu alphabet. And, notwithstanding the divergence of opinion among high authorities, the above arguments compel us to accept the theory that the Tamil alphabet
