Page:A Grammar of the Telugu language.djvu/9

Rh and found them indeed to corroborate all that he and other critickscritics [sic] declare regarding saral-adesam; but the sacata repha occurred very rarely and apparently was used or neglected at the option of the transcriber. My doubts as to the cogency of his doctrines (which indeed very few of the Telugus themselves comprehend) were confirmed by observing that among many manuscripts of the Mahabharat, no two agreed in the spelling of those words wherein he requires the introduction of the Sacata Repha: which therefore seems to be, like the Greek digamma, wholly fallen into oblivion.

The same observations may apply to the ardha bindu, or semicircle; a character, or accentual point, rarely to be found in any ancient manuscript, however warmly advocated by many pandits at the present day. But I have had the assistance of men of acknowledged learning; of whom mention is made in an Essay on Telugu Literature printed in the Madras Literary Society's Journal for July 1839, page 59. One of these was the commentator on the Manu Charitra and other celebrated poems. They held Appa Cavi in high veneration but were constrained to admit that even on his authority these two letters (the obsolete R and N) could not be reasonably revived, while opposed by all the older manuscripts of all the Telugu poems. In Sanscrit poems the arddh' anuswaram or Semi-nasal, is indeed very properly retained, but they who introduce this Sanscrit point into Telugu appear to act upon no fixed principle; and as our business is with the Telugu as now spoken and written, we may safely neglect a refinement unknown to the bulk of the people. Accordingly these two obscure letters are wholly excluded from the new editions of the Vasu Charitra, the Mahabharat, and the Dwipada Ramayan, wherein the ordinary and popular mode of spelling is uniformly observed.

Bowing to the authority of Appa Cavi I had originally introduced the obsolete R and N into the Grammar and dictionary; but in progress of time I observed that no pandit or scholar of acknowledged authority in the language laid any stress on these refinements, which, as already mentioned, are unknown to the people at large. By reasoning on these facts, as opposed to the assertions of the ordinary (sastris) tutors and moonshees I at last was led to exclude these needless characters from the grammar: my object being to describe the language as it is; not such as philologists assert it ought to be. The removal of these fictitious obstacles has rendered my task much easier and I now hope that Telugu will no longer be considered the most difficult of the Peninsular languages.

The greater part of this Grammar is devoted to the common Telugu of every dayeveryday [sic] life, but at the conclusion (page 246–7; and 266) I have given a short account of the Telugu literature, comprizingcomprising [sic] the names of the more celebrated poems. Probably many of these favourite volumes will be as un-