The grantha (of the Sanskrit ग्रन्थ grantha , delivers or handwritten) is an old writing which was prévalente in the south of the India. It is supposed that it evolved/moved of the Brahmi, another old writing of India. It influenced the alphabets malayalam and sinhala.

The grantha and Sanskrit

Although today the Sanskrit quasi-exlusivement is quasi-exlusivement written using the Devanagari, it missed a standard writing at its beginnings. The grantha was used to note the Sanskrit in the areas Tamoul ophones of the South Asia until the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, it started to be replaced by the devanagari in the religious and erudite writings, and by the Alphabet tamoul (decorated Diacritique S) in the popular texts.

The grantha was also employed historically to note the Manipravalam tamoul-Sanskrit, a mixture of tamoul and Sanskrit used in the Exégèse S of the texts Sanskrits. This situation leads to a frankly complex system in which the words tamouls were to be noted in Alphabet tamoul and the words Sanskrits in grantha. About the 15th century, the system had reached such a complexity that the same word could be written partly in an alphabet, partly in the other: the sanskrite root in grantha, the Suffix S in tamoul. This system fell in disuse when the Manipravalam lost its popularity, but by practice, the printed texts which were at the origin in manipravalam continued to employ it until the middle of the 20th century.

At our time, the grantha is still used in the religious field by the Hindu orthodoxe tamoulophones. It is indeed used to note the name of a child for the first time during the ceremony of the Nāmikarṇa, or for traditional formulas in the almanacs.

The grantha and the tamoul

It is thought that the Tamoul was written in grantha during a certain period, but nowadays, the tamoul has its own alphabet.

Certain tests of loans of words Sanskrits in tamoul took place from the past; although there exist well defined rules of loans to write the foreign words in tamoul, certain people noted these words in grantha.