The Pallava script, or Pallava Grantha, is a style of

Grantha script The Grantha script (; ; ) is a classical South Indian Brahmic script, found particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Originating from the Pallava script, the Grantha script is related to Tamil and Vatteluttu scripts. The modern Malayalam script ...

named after the

Pallava dynasty The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The Pallavas played a crucial role in shaping in particular southern Indian history and heritage. The dynasty ros ...

Southern India South India, also known as Southern India or Peninsular India, is the southern part of the Deccan Peninsula in India encompassing the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana as well as the union territories of ...

(

Tamilakam Tamilakam () also known as ancient Tamil country as was the geographical region inhabited by the ancient Tamil people, covering the southernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. Tamilakam covered today's Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, La ...

) and is attested to since the 4th century CE. In India, the Pallava script evolved from

Tamil-Brahmi Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamili or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in Old Tamil.Richard Salomon (1998) ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prak ...

. The

originated from the Pallava script. Pallava also spread to Southeast Asia and evolved into scripts such as

Balinese Balinese may refer to: *Bali, an Indonesian island *Balinese art *Balinese dance *Balinese people *Balinese language *Nusa Penida Balinese * Bali Aga Balinese **Balinese script **Balinese (Unicode block) *Balinese mythology *Balinese cat, a cat bre ...

Baybayin Baybayin (,), also sometimes erroneously referred to as alibata, is a Suyat, Philippine script widely used primarily in Luzon during the 16th and 17th centuries and prior to write Tagalog language, Tagalog and to a lesser extent Visayan lang ...

, Javanese, Kawi, Khmer,

Lanna The Lan Na kingdom or the Kingdom of Lanna (, , "Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields"; , , ), also known as Lannathai, was an Indianized state centered in present-day Northern Thailand from the 13th to the 18th centuries. The cultural developme ...

, Lao, Mon–Burmese, New Tai Lue, Sundanese, and Thai. This script is the sister of the

Vatteluttu script ''Vatteluttu'' (, ' and , ', ), also transliterated as ''Vattezhuthu'', was an alphasyllabic or syllabic writing system of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka formerly employed for writing the Tamil and Malayalam languages. The ...

which was used to write Tamil and Malayalam in the past. Epigrapher Arlo Griffiths argues that the name of the script is misleading as not all of the relevant scripts referred to have a connection with the Pallava dynasty. He instead advocates that these scripts be called Late Southern Brāhmī scripts.

History

During the rule of the

Pallavas The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The Pallavas played a crucial role in shaping in particular southern Indian history and heritage. The dynasty ros ...

, the script accompanied priests, monks, scholars, and traders into

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

. Pallavas developed the Pallava script based on

. The main characteristics of the newer script are aesthetically matched and fuller consonant glyphs, similarly visible in the writing systems of Chalukya, Kadamba, and Vengi at the time of Ikshvakus. Brahmi's design was slightly different from the scripts of Cholas, Pandyas, and Cheras. Pallava script was the first significant development of Brahmi in India, combining rounded and rectangular strokes and adding typographical effects, and was suitable for civic and religious inscriptions. ''Kadamba-Pallava script'' evolved into early forms of Kannada and Telugu scripts. Glyphs become more rounded and incorporate loops because of writing upon leaves and paper. The script is not yet a part of

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

but proposals have been made to include it. In 2018, Anshuman Pandey made a proposal.Pandey, Anshuman. (2018).
Preliminary proposal to encode Pallava in Unicode
'.

Characteristics

The form shown here is based on examples from the 7th century CE. Letters labeled * have uncertain sound value, as they have little occurrence in Southeast Asia.

Consonants

Each consonant has an inherent /a/, which will be sounded if no vowel sign is attached. If two consonants follow one another without intervening vowel, the second consonant is made into a subscript form, and attached below the first.

Independent Vowels

Examples

Unicode

A proposal to encode the script in

was submitted in 2018.

References

Bibliography

* Sivaramamurti, C, ''Indian Epigraphy and South Indian Scripts.'' Bulletin of the Madras Government Museum. Chennai 1999

External links

* {{list of writing systems 4th-century introductions Obsolete writing systems Brahmic scripts Pallava Empire