1Comments on Proposal L2/12-039, “Proposal to add two letters to the Grantha repertoire”

Grantha character set and encode them as Grantha NNNA and Grantha LLLA. Epigraphists ’ view of NNNA and LLLA in Grantha Before addressing each letter’s inclusion into Grantha, I would like to address the issue of whether Grantha script ever included the letters NNNA and LLLA. Over several centuries both Grantha and Tamil scripts have been used macaronically in inscriptions. Sometimes this has resulted in Tamil NNNA or LLLA being used in words in which other characters are from the Grantha script. Notwithstanding these occurrences, there has been no epigraphist who has called LLLA and NNNA as Grantha characters. Not surprisingly, books describing Grantha alphabet do not include LLLA and NNNA as Grantha letters. As a result, we can say that there is no evidence that Grantha character set ever included NNNA and LLLA. On the inclusion of NNNA in the Grantha script Going by the order of letters presented in L2/12-039, let us look at NNNA first. The example given in the proposal as justifying the addition of NNNA to Grantha is a false evidence, which is obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of the use of Tamil and Grantha scripts by the Tamils. Exhibit 1.Example used by Everson in proposal L2/12-039 The example given is grammatically and orthographically Tamil. This is an example of th