Page:A grammar of the Teloogoo language.djvu/8

 The Author, having been nominated to a seat at the Board of Superintendence for the College, had frequent opportunities of observing the disadvantage under which the Teloogoo Students laboured, from the want of a work on the elements of that language. An attempt to remove this impediment was a duty which the author’s situation in some degree imposed; and actuated by this motive, as well as by a desire to rescue the Teloogoo from the undeserved neglect in which its great difficulty had involved it, and to extend among his countrymen the knowledge of a language spoken by a large portion of the native subjects of the British Government in the South of India, he proceeded to arrange the notes, on the native grammars of the language, which he had taken to assist his own studies, in the form which they have assumed in the following pages.

The manuscript, thus prepared, was submitted to the Government of Fort St. George, whose approbation it having been so fortunate as to obtain, the copy right was purchased on the public account, and the Right Honorable the Governor in Council was pleased to direct that the work should be printed at the College Press, whence it now issues to the Public.

Every first attempt to illustrate the principles of a foreign language is attended by peculiar difficulties; but to do justice to a language so highly cultivated as the Teloogoo required advantages to which the author makes no pretension: nevertheless he hopes that in essential respects, the work will not be