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 Mr. VENKATARANGA ROW’S MODELS OF COMPOSITION

157. It was a grave injustice to the Real Kavya school which Chinnayya Sun represented, to group it with the Neo-Kavya School. Nowhere is this confusion of schools more glaring than in the list of models of composition which Mr. G. Venkataranga Row submitted for the consideration of the Intermediate Composition Committee. Few books in the list make any pretensions to high literary merit. Most of them can prove of use only as furnishing illustrations of faults of style, and in respect of language, they range from the inflated Kavya dialect of Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu’s Nitichandrika to the incorrect and colourless Neo-Kavya dialect of the Vijnana Chandrika series.

158. Chinnayya Suri is called the father of Telugu prose in the Kavya dialect. His rendering of the Sanskrit fable Hitopadesa has some literary merit, especially the first part. The sentences are short and rhythmical. The sense is always clear; and the author showed a restraint, rare among Telugu writers in the use of words and figures of speech.

159. The same cannot be said of his imitators whose name is legion. It is unfortunate that nearly every Telugu Pandit in a college felt and feels that he must needs be a poet, because he happens to be a pandit. His influence generally secures recognition to his works, and many bad books are thus foisted upon the unfortunate students - books which would not have commanded a circulation but for the patronage of the University or the Department of Education.

160. Two renderings of the Sanskrit (Beast Fable) Hitopadesa into the Kavya dialect, are connected with the honoured names of two scholars who served as Pandits in the Presidency College, Madras - both excellent men. Some of Rao Bahadur Veeresalingam