Pallava refers to a period of history when a dynasty of warrior-kings
by that name ruled much of Southeast India. The period was roughly 3rd-5th century AD,
and their presence was felt as far away as the Philippines and Borneo.
For when they weren’t soldiering or trading - or perhaps because of these activities
in foreign lands - they developed (or fostered) a very beautiful and influential writing script.
It was based on ancient Brahmi, the primary writing system of southeast Eurasia. From it they
formed an aesthetically matched set of consonant glyphs, and extended the idea of attached
vowel-signs to allow consecutive consonants or clusters to be joined in ‘stacks’.
These distinctive features, along with the attractive long swirling tails and nice sense of
space and layout, popped up all over South India, as well as in Southeast Asia.
Originally it was used to write Sanskrit, various forms of Prakrit including Pali,
and local languages. But something about this script must have been very impressive, incised
upon stone monuments both political and religious; during the next 500 years, variations and
evolutions of it were being used to write most of the languages of Southeast Asia.
In India, it directly or indirectly influenced:
- Telugu
- Kannada
- Tamil
- Malayalam
- Sinhala
In SE Asia, it was the parent of:
- Mon - Burmese
- Khmer - Cambodian
- Lanna
- Thai, Lao
- Tai Lue and other Tai languages
- Cham (Vietnam)
- Kawi - Javanese, Balinese, Buginese
- Sundanese
Other names for the script - depending on the locale - include Southern Gupta Brahmi,
proto-Kannada, Tamil Grantham, etc. But Pallava is the common name for the ancestor
of SE Asian scripts in those parts, and serves as a handy nomen for the distinctive
features which took such a firm hold.
Details of the Thai and Lanna scripts can be found in
Thai: serious yet simple.
