This book is intended to facilitate access to the amazing wealth of
documents written in the five major South Indian scripts. It focusses on
the South Indian Sanskrit tradition, but also takes into account the
modern alphabets of the respective Dravidian languages. The sometimes
bewildering variety of the five scripts is mapped out in altogether c.
5200 basic characters, ligatures (i.e., vocalizations),
conjuncts/consonant clusters, numerals, abbreviations etc. Special care
has been taken to break down the complexity of Grantha Tamil in a system
of graphic classification.The material surveyed comprises Sanskrit
manuscripts as well as the Southern tradition of Sanskrit printing, and
books in Dravidian languages (including Tranquebar prints).