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 Introduction

A new venture such as this—a Journal devoted to promote the study of Telugu—may seem unwarranted arrogance. Do not the lists of publications issued by the Registrar of books prove that Telugu has an increasing literature? Are there not famous writers already in the land? Do not series for the diffusion of knowledge in Telugu flourish? Does not the University prescribe for the delectation of its undergraduates poems and dramas by living poets and play wrights? What then is the need for stimulating the study of Telugu?

For some years past, there has been vigorous controversy between two schools of thought. The one maintains that true literary salvation is to be sought in the past, which sets up a standard of orthodoxy and points, as its models, to the performances of Writers in what the late lamented G. V. Apparow Pantulu garu named the neo-Kavya dialect. The other proclaims the need of ‘a new angle of vision’ (to use a cant phrase of today), sets up new standards of literature and language, resting them upon what it conceives to be the lessons learnt from English, French etc. Thus, the literature of any age reﬂects the thoughts and habits of the time; it changes from age to age and in one age does not follow slavishly a standard