The Tulu or Tuluva, although of the same derivation as the Malcalam, is a distinct tongue, but much intermixed with others, especially the Canarese. Tulu uses the Canarese character. It is destitute of a literature, but is the most highly developed of the Dravidian family of tongues.
Malcalam and Tulu are considered by Dr. Caldwell to be in gradual course of extinction. The people speaking the Tulu shrink from con tact with foreigners, even from people of their own race, retreating from the great roads, cities, and bazars as eagerly as the Tamil flocks to them; and the Maleala-speaking race are to be found isolated with their families in their high walled parambu, even in parts where the lines and centres of communication are entirely occupied by the more enterprising Tamil people, whose language, too, seems gradually pushing the Maleala aside.
Xerxes, son of Darius, king of Persia, issued orders to the rulers of the 127 provinces of his empire, to each in the vernacular and peculiar character of his respective district. But of these characters there aro remnants only of the Hebrew, Samaritan, Phoenician, Greek of Ionia, the old Bactrian of the Avesta, the Demotic of Egypt, the three languages of the tablets of Behistun, the languages of Akkad and Susa, and possibly that of the Asoka inscription at Kapurdigiri. All the others have perished. Dr. W. W. Hunter says that from inscriptions on rocks, pillars, and copper plates the Indian alphabets can be traced back to the third century B.C. Mr. R. N. Cust says (p. 19) that all the characters used in writing the languages of the East Indies can be traced back to the Asoka inscriptions, and through them to the Phoenician alphabet, and thence backwards to the hieratic ideographs of the old kingdom of Egypt, and thence to the venerable hieroglyphics of the 4th dynasty. The solitary exception is the Chinese character used in Annam.
The various characters used in the inscriptions found on ancient sculptures in Southern Asia and India may be briefly summarized as under :— Allahabad Lat. Pali, old, of the Burmese.
Allahabad Gupta. Pali, modern.
Amraoti. Palmyrene.
Aramaean. Panjabl.
Aryan or Bactrian. Parthian.
Bengali. Phoenician of M. de Leynes.
Bhilsa. Phoenician, Numismatic, Chaldwo-Pehlavi or Par- of M. de Leynes.
tbian. Punic of M. de Leynes.
Deva-Nagari. Sah Kings of Saurashtra.
Gujerat copper plate. Semi tie.
Gujerati modern alphabet. Sinaitic.
Kistna. Syriac, 5th century.
Kufic. Syriac, modern.
Kutila. Telinga.
Lat, or Indian Pali. Tibetan.
Nerbadda. Western Caves.
Peblavi modern alphabet. Zend.
Pehlavi, Sassanian.
Mr. H. T. Prinsep gives the following list of transitions of the Indian alphabet from the time of Asoka, with some of the most marked local varieties at present in use, viz. those used in the sculptures of Asoka's edicts of the 3d Nerbadda.
Century B.O. Kistna.
Western Caves. Telinga, modern.
Sah inscription, Girnar. Tibetan, modern.
Gupta inscription, Alla- Square Pali.
babad. Gujerati.
Valabhi plates from Guje- Panjabi.
rat. Kashmir'.
Kutila inscription of the Bengali.
10th century A.D. at Deva-Nagari.
Bareilly.
And he gives the following ten modifications of the Sanskrit alphabet from B.c. 543 to A.D. 1200, viz.:— Fifth century B.C., rice of Buddhism.
Uncertain, Western Caves.
Third century B.C., Sanskrit inscriptions of Atoka, Junggar)).
Second century A.D., Gujerat dated plates.
Fifth century A.D., Allahabad inscriptions of the Gupta dynasty.
'Seventh century A.D., Tibetan alphabet formed from Sanskrit.
Ninth century A.D., Kutila inscriptions from Bareilly, A.D. 992.
Eleventh century A.D., Bengali alphabet as now modified Adisur, A.D. 1065.
Modern Deva-Nagari alphabet.
Old Pali alphabet of the Burmese, compared with A.D. 200.
The writing characters in use in the East Indies are undergoing absorption, but arc numerous. Several learned men have proposed to substitute the Roman and italic forms for those in use in the native tongues. Professor H. H. Wilson in his Glossary expresses the opinion that the English alphabet had enabled him to represent the letters of 9 alphabets of 13 different languages of British India. But by diacritic points and marks, and by compounding letters, he increased the English alphabet from 26 letters to 70 of his characters, 19 of the English letters having 2 to 6 forms, viz. b, c, e, i, j, o, p, and u each 2 ; g, h, and 1 each 3 ; d and k each 4 ; a, r, s, t, and z each 5 ; while n has no less than 6 forms; and he has even recommended additions to these.