Page:Gurujadalu English.djvu/340

 school have, for sometime, constituted their high-priest. (By Old school, I mean Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu and his friends and not real orthodoxy).

Rao Bahadur K. Veerasalingam Pantulu Garu says in the preface to the revised edition of Brown’s Dictionary “It (Telugu) is spoken and written in its purity along the coast-strip between Nellore and Vizagapatam and in the four districts of the Madras Presidency included with in those limits.” (Brown’s Telugu-English Dictionary, revised edition, introduction p.iv).

61. In deriving the word Telugu from Trilinga, Telugu grammarians gave Srisaila in the Kurnool district and Draksharama in the Godavari district, as the western and the eastern limits respectively of the Telugu country, which again bears testimony to the importance of Krishna and Godavari Telugu. (Vide Ahobala Panditiyamu, Ellore edition, Volume I, page 140).

UNIFORMITY OF STANDARD TELUGU

62. The remarkable uniformity of Standard Telugu is due to physical, social and historical conditions. The Northern districts are isolated on one side by mountain ranges inhabited by uncivilised tribes, and on the other by the sea. The Brahmans who were repositories of culture and the creators of polite speech were constantly at requisition at the courts of kings and chiefs, and everywhere at ceremonials where sumptuous feeding and largess could be had. The proverb went, that a king was respected only in his kingdom, but a scholar everywhere. We learn from inscriptions that, when large agraha rams were granted to Brahmans, Scholars from far and near were invited to settle in them. Brahman families were constantly moving about the country, their objective generally being localities which offered facilities for betterment. A cursory examination of brahman family names which, in most cases, are