The origin and history of Vattezhuthu in Kerala

Abstract

A written language is superior to one merely spoken. It is because when former has greater fixity and progressiveness than the latter. The presence of characters in an idiom, gives it a district and characteristic shape. The form, as it were, the back - bone of the language without which it cannot to hold its own. The earliest known Malayalam alphabet is the Vattezhuttu. There are three theories as to the origin of the Vattezhuthu. Thoma’s Theory Beame’s Theory, Burnell’s Theory, Vattezhuttu, being thus adapted for writing both the Tamil and Malayalam languages, came to prevail in the Pandya and Chera kingdoms alike. The earliest Vattezhuttu inscription known to scholars is the one in front of the Trivandrum Museum which records the death of a Malabar king at Vilinjam. It was the Chera and Kerala kings who used the Vattezhuttu alphabet uniformly in their grants. In the tenth and eleventh centuries of the Christian era, there were two varieties of the Vattezhuttu character, one of the southern and the other the northern. On an examination of the various Vattezhuttu inscriptions in Travancore.