56 



Essay on Teh/gu Literature. 



[July 



independent of this peculiarity) change the initial T into D, or P into 

 B &c. Thus we meet with the word zoccam, elegance : and are told to 

 search for it under coccam : thus ga-jevuta, to accomplish, must be 

 sought under ca not ga : indeed a learned native assistant when asked 

 will often reply that either initial is good. After some years? I perceiv- 

 ed that the evil lay in separating letters that were originally one. Ac- 

 cordingly I caused the new arrangement to be made, which at once re- 

 medied the evil : thus each of these sets of letters (k, kh, g, gh, for 

 instance), now forms but cue alphabet, just as I and J used to be ming- 

 led in the English dictionaries. The approbation it has received from 

 sound scholars leads me to believe that the new arrangement is such as 

 necessity called for. It certainly much facilitates the task of finding an 

 article when required. The principle of softening initial consonants 

 is found in Welsh, in Gaelic, in Irish, and mother languages of the Cel- 

 tic school. Thus words beginning wi'hK, ch, T and P may substitute 

 G, J, D, and B. It is curious to trace the same principle in languages so 

 far removed fr< m each other. 



49. Besides, Mamadi Vencaya has diminished the utility of his lexi- 

 con by giving into some foolish rules of spelling that are very d-^ar to the 

 dulness of modern days. If these doctrines be right, then all the anci- 

 ent manuscripts of all the poets are wrong. I will briefly mention these 

 rules, that the reader may understand their true value, when they are 

 urged on his attention by Telugu pedants. 



50. The letter R has two forms, the Telugu form and the Canarese 

 form: which differ from one another in shape, but not perceptibly in 

 sound : just as the small " r" in the obsolete Saxon alphabet differs in 

 shape from the Roman letter r which we now use. Those few Telugu 

 poets who wrote in the earliest ages used one form in some words and 

 the other form in other words : stating that these two could not rhyme 

 together. In sound, perhaps one differed from the other in old days, 

 just as much as the aspirated and unaspkated Rho did in Greek. Or like 

 the two sounds of R used in Hindustani. Yet even in those days usage 

 evidently was various and it is clear that the Jangama bards coeval with 

 Nannaya admitted no such canon. But in the third or golden age of 

 Telugu literature (before A ppa Cavi appeared), this distinction had pe- 

 rished : and (unless in the commentators) we find no traces of it in the 

 Vasu Charitra, the Parujat Apaharanam, the Vishnu Chittiyam, the 

 Vijaya Vilasam, or the Manu Charitra : names which in Telugu litera- 

 ture rival the poems of Pope and Dry den, Goldsmith and Scott among 

 ourselves. Now if we determine that words which the Saxons wrote 

 with their peculiar R cannot in English rhyme to similar words bor- 



