360 



Essay on Telugu Literature. 



[Oct. 



IV. — Essay on the Language and Literature of the Telugus. — By 

 Charles P. Brown, Esq. of the Madras Cioil Service. 



(Continued from our last ) 



63. The Telugu Poems may be divided into two classes ; popular and 

 classical. The popular works (samanya cavayamulu) are principally 

 written in (dwipada) uniform couplets : and are much in the familiar style 

 of Ovid, Gay's Fables or Scott's Marmion. The classical (maha cavy- 

 am) are usually in (padyamnlu) stanzas : and may be compared to the 

 Odes of Horace, or Gray. On the principles adopted in western criti- 

 cism the taste displayed in the former class is often worthy of approba- 

 tion. Even in these, bombast, immorality, bad taste and childish con- 

 ceils, frequently occur. But these rhetorical flourishes are far more pro- 

 minent in those poems which are written in stanzas; doubtless each 

 of these admired, works contains a kernel of really pleasing poetry, but 

 this is preceded by many a page of ill judged rhetoric, wherein the poet 

 is evidently a mere grammarian, " a word catcher (as Pope says) who 

 lives in syllables." He rejoices in synonymes, and the dictionary is ne- 

 ver out of his thoughts. In many stanzas (particularly in the metre 

 called sisa) the same thought is thrice reiterated with a mere change 

 of phrase. Thus " the fair malal decked with these jewels entered the 

 presence of the king. The bright damsel arrayed with these gems pass- 

 ed into the court of the prince. Such were the adornments of the beau- 

 teous nymph when approaching the royal threshold" Such passages 

 possess an undeniable value as regards the foreigner, who will find 

 these stanzas a most convenient substitute for the Amara Cosha and 

 similar vocabularies of synonymes. But the taste they display is paltry 

 enough. 



The absence of these and other pedantries renders the poems written 

 in couplets much mere agreeable to a foreigner : who will value them 

 for that simplicity which is a fault in the estimation of learned bramins. 

 Besides, most, perhaps all, the Dwipada poems are the composition of 

 sudras; whereas the Padya poems are in general the work of the sacred 

 tribe: yet the great boast of the nation, the one Bhat't'u Mu'RTr, or 

 " inspired bard," who wrote the Vasu Charitra was himself a Siidra. 



With a few exceptions all the poems are founded on a popular story 

 borrowed from the Puranas : which the poet alters at his own pleasure 

 till it deviates as widely from the original as Byron's Don Juan, or Mil- 

 ton's Agonistes deviate from the original ground work. 



64. Most of the popular fables have been framed in verse both in 

 couplets and in fetanzas. But no poet that I recollect has written in 



