Image talk:Uttama coin.png

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I find it interesting to note that the reverse of the coin has text that resembles modern Bengali language while I was expecting it to be written in some south Indian language. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 05:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting indeed. The script is definitely Bengali. Is it really Sri Lankan, or was it mistyped/categorized? --Ragib 06:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I can even read the text as "Uttam Chol" or "Uttam Bol". Looks same as modern Bangla script. --Ragib 06:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The "chol"/"bol" difference is minor and considering that it belongs to a period that's thousands of years back, this much difference should be expected. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 07:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

What language did the Cholas speak? I'm not a linguist, but still I'm amazed. --Ragib 07:11, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Very very interesting! My guess: The text *looks* like Bengali but I don't think it is. Note that the bottom part says "Chola", but it looks like "Bolô" if it were Bengali. I'm guessing it's not written in any modern script - in fact, the description of the image saying that this is "Devanagari" is inappropriate. Keep in mind that the Devanagari and Bengali scripts were not really considered different writing systems for centuries - they were simply regional variants of the same old Nagari script - which only later became differentiated in subsequent centuries and much more recently standardized with the advent of printing. At the time of the Cholas, it would not be surprising if Sanskrit were normally written in the script that later evolved into Devanagari and Bengali, thus incorporating some of what we now know as the unique details of those modern scripts. Although the Cholas most likely spoke/wrote in an archaic form of Tamil, it would not be surprising of much of the official documents and coinage was done in Sanskrit or at least written using an older Nagari-style alphabet to look more like Sanskrit. Anyhow, most of this is speculation anyway! --SameerKhan 08:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)