The most common supposition has been that these two signs are case suffixes, JAR for the genitive and ARROW for the locative or the dative. However, most (though not all) sequences preceding these two signs are mutually exclusive, thus making it improbable that they are case-markers (which are generally recognized from the circumstance that they are added to the same nouns but… >

There has been a controversy among Dravidianists whether the two-way gender distinction as in Old Telugu (masculine/non-masculine) or the three-way distinction as in Tamil (masculine/feminine/neuter) represents the original situation in Dravidian. It is however now well settled that in this respect Old Telugu represents the Proto-Dravidian pattern and that the separate feminin… >

Most of these titles are obscure and are yet to be satisfactorily interpreted. However, prima facie, it is somewhat strange that so many titles of the king should end with the non-masculine suffix -(a)mpu/-(a)mbu. A possible explanation is that the words themselves are grammatically in the neuter gender, though they serve as birudas (honorific titles) of the … >

Before concluding, I may also draw attention to the possibility, as in other ideographic scripts, of a sign having both literal (pictorial) and transferred (phonetic) values in different contexts. It appears that in the unique compound sign ARROW- BEARER, where the ARROW sign is placed at the top and has to be read first in accordance with normal convention, it… >