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 THE LAW OF THE ORDERLY DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES

183. Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu thinks that the propaganda of the modern school is “ill-conceived, revolutionary and contrary to the Law of the orderly development of languages”. The orderly development of languages is a long exploded myth. Does Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu seriously mean that the forced and chaotic changes to which the poetic dialect was subjected within the last 50 years in a misdirected attempt to force it into a modern prose mould, can be honored with the name of orderly development? Thank God! the poetic dialect is intact in the works of the early poets, and the so-called “orderly development” has benefitted only an illegitimate false personation, the Neo-Kavya or Pseudo-Kavya dialect.

184. The poetic dialect has great merits but only as a poetic instrument. Poetic exigencies conditioned its development. An attempt to use it for modern prose is no more sane than running the sacred car of Jagannath on a modern rail road.

185. Organic growth or orderly development of languages is a metaphor and like most metaphors — introduced into serious discussions, it is misleading. Living languages change sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The forces which are in operation in a living language and the process of operation are very different from the few changes, mostly mechanical, which occur in an archaic literary dialect. Telugu poets made a few deviations from literary usage but these were mostly due to metrical exigencies and did not, except in rare cases, receive general acceptance. I may instance