that "those who explain the poets have in all ages fallen into one common error: they have illustrated and magnified themselves first, and have given less thought to the work in hand."* The same want of judgment is evident in the course which native tutors recommend. Instead of ordinary dialogues, tales, trials, letters, and histories, Telugu assistants counsel us to read the venerated Srj Bhagavat(as a pious act), and the prose Telugu Ramayan, one or two books of the Mahabharat, the Sanscrit vocabulary by Arnara, the versified set of Telugu synonymes called Andhra-Bhasha-Bhushanam, or the treatises on grammar written by Nannaiia Bhalta and Appa Cavi.f Happily for me I never read one of these books until I had already (about the age of twenty-seven) acquired a command of the spoken Telugu.
I will mention some of the poems which seem profitable to the proficient. He may begin with a perusal of the verses of Vemana. These are useful as teaching a variety of common expressions. Such a series of verses is called a Satacam, or Anthology. A few of these little volumes are the works of accurate poets: others are merely juvenile essays. Next he should read the Lila, written in (dwipada,) couplets, and the Chenna Basava Puranam, which is written in "padya-cavyam," or stanzas. These two are disagreeable to Bramhans, as being heretical. He may then proceed to the four different poems on Harischandra's adventures, quoted in the dictionary as HK, HN, UH, and HD, He may then read the Abhimanya Dwipada and the adventures of Kalapurna, finishing with the Dasavatara Charitra and the Pancha Tantram. These poems have all been carefully edited, and fitted with elaborate commentaries framed in Telugu under my directions. Silly prose abridgements of the Pancha Tantram, and of the Vicramarca Tales have long been read by students, but are unprofitable.
Some who have not studied Hindu books speak of them as licentious; but there is more vice in Ovid's Metamorphoses, in Congreve's plays, and in Lesage's romances, than will easily be found in all Hindu literature.
- Hact, prefrace to his Delphin edition of Vigil.
! These unprofitable books are still, in 1836, taught t5o native people in the Madras University.
