32 
ON THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS 
distinct characters, the pronunciation still remains so uncer- 
tain, that in his Telugu Dictionary the late Mr. CP. Brown 
arranged these four letters respectively under one head. The 
cause of this striking peculiarity and these continual per- 
mutations is to be found partly no doubt in indefinite pro- 
nunciation and dialectical divergencies, but mainly in the 
strict enforcement of the over-stringent and artificial rules 
of Sandhi or Euphony, which affect alike vowels and eon- 
sonants, and which do not, e.g., permit a word in the middle 
of a sentence to begin with a vowel. Local ditferenees in 
pronunciation exist in India as well as in other countries. 
Amongst these the interchanges between tenues and mediae 
are most common ; we find them in Wales and in Grerman 
Saxony, where the tenues p, t, and k are to this day con- 
founded with the mediae b, d, and g, or vice versa. 
The three Dravidian Ts (I eo, l<sfr and I te) however differ- 
ently they may be pronounced, are only vai'ieties of the same 
sound andare therefore interchangeable, thus,e.^.,the Sanskrit 
phalam becomes in llam\\. palam ueoih^ or palam uLgti, while 
mallam ld/susuld becomes mallam LD&rmLb, velldlan Qeu&rsmr en- sin- 
is also spelt velldlan Q<svsn-efrn-ipesr, and a village or town is 
called 2Mlli usu^ (valli su&jsS), palli usiTsrfi, or pdli u.tlS. 
The harsher sound is generally used by the lower classes, and 
where these pronounce an I or &fr a high caste-man will 
lisp a l5 which letter is probably a modern innovation 
prevailing specially in Malayalam and Tamil. 
As the different I's interchange between each other, so do 
the two Dravidian r and r ; ' a hard double p/D rr is pro- 
nounced in Tamil somewhat like a double tf,^ which circimi- 
* Tamil ff" and /d, Telugu tS and fes^ Kanarese and &s, Malayalam 
<o and o. 
3 The Tamil /B/D is represented occasionally in Telugu by ^'.■>, e.o., the 
Tamil ^P^, puyyu, corresponds to the Telugu 4^*0 put{«. 
