1889] 



Essay on Telagu Liter alum. 



47 



15. Before proceeding to further details it may be worth while to 

 describe the state of the national taste, among the learned and the less 

 literate. The few B ram ins who cultivate Sanscrit learning generally 

 study grammar, a few of the works on divinity, metaphysics, law and 

 logic: also some portion of the poetical and theatrical writers. To read 

 through a poem is thought quite superfluous, and those who assert their 

 complete mastery of the Magna, the Ramayan, and other leading clas- 

 sics, seldom can prove that they have perused more than a few chapters 

 in each. 



16. Another class devote their attention to Telugu learning and ac- 

 quire a good mastery of the Vasu Charitra, Manu Charitra, Vishnu 

 Chittiyam, and other poems of celebrity. Even amung these scholars the 

 grammar of their language is as little cared for as English grammar is 

 among the English. They talk of their native philologists with enthu- 

 siasm ; but the celebrated grammar written by Nannaya Bhatta, has, 

 with all his commentators nearly fallen into oblivion : perhaps not 

 twenty men can at the present day be produced throughout Telingana 

 who can prove their acquaintance with it. 



17. The pedantry of their treatises on prosody has led to similar 

 disuse. The Siva Andhra is, like its Sanscrit model the Amara Cosha, 

 very widely taught : — about one quarter of the Cosha is taught to nearly 

 every school-boy. He also commits a few moral stanzas to memory, 

 and is taught writing and arithmetic. This usually terminates his edu- 

 cation, ar.d hundreds even of clerks in our public offices have but 

 this limited instruction. 



18. We often hear the Puranas and the Ramayan spoken of along with 

 the Vedas as being the scriptures of India ; but they are very little stu- 

 died. I may here mention that only three Vedas exist ; each Bramin's 

 progenitors professed one of these three; and no man would even admit 

 the other two into his house ; as mutual hatred is the only remaining 

 trace of braminical zeal. The Jangamas alone profess to obey the Vedat 

 and Calpas (or systems), and even these sectarians have entirely renounc- 

 ed the ritual portion of these laws. They reject all the puranas and 

 the Ramayan itself, and are therefore held in theological hatred by the 

 Bramins. 



In this itis distinctly stated that king Krishna Rayal died in the Salirahana yoav 13« i 

 the year being denoted in the usnal ingenious mode by four words » mountain*, o » - 

 phants, fires and Moon-i. e.. seven, eight, three and one, which dgnrea being — 

 give the *ra. This mode of numerical notation has been fully explained n ^ 

 the subject, written, if I recollect right, by Mr. Prinsep ot Calcu a. T w 

 assigned in the table framed by Colonel Mackenzie (which is puita 1m h, Lntrodu 

 en to Mr. Campbell's Telugu Grammar), is six years earlier ; or, A. V. 0 



