Forerunners of Cōḻa meykkīrttis

The original submitted text has however been dramatically altered. The transliteration scheme has been changed and many errors have crept in during the process. This is a corrected version of the article. The pagination is that of the published version. One endnote (No. 30), the transliteration scheme (of the Madras Tamil Lexicon) and the marking in bold of Grantha letters in the quotations of inscriptions have been restored. The misprints have been corrected. E. Francis 2017-03-15.; International audience; As a tribute to Dr. K.V. Ramesh, who has been a forerunner for establishing a dialogue between Indian epigraphists and foreign scholars, this paper is about other forerunners from a remote period, those that went ahead of the well-known Cōḻa meykkīrttis.