and feelings of the people. We live among them, to use their own metaphor, like oil on water: we have little confidential intercourse with them and after a residence of many years in India, few of our countrymen can answer easy questions regarding the Hindus. Missionaries enjoy, because they seek greater facilities: and those Christian teachers who have resided among the Hindus (chiefly Roman Catholic priests though a few Protestants have done the same) confess that they have derived much benefit from such studies. I for my part can avow that when I commenced the study of Telugu authors, I was already acquainted with what was already printed on Hinduism, both in English and French: and yet I was progressively taught notions entertained by the Hindus or customs observed among them which were entirely novel to me. This experience has shown me that we cannot understand the peculiarities of any nation unless we not only live among them (and as a magistrate, I had much intercourse with all classes) but also study a few volumes of the literature they cultivate. Such study however has its inconveniencies: natives who make much progress in English are looked upon as almost Heretics: and equally mild is the epithet bestowed on those who have devoted some attention to Hindu literature.
In other languages, we may safely neglect prosody: but in Telugu almost every thing is taught in verse: indeed grammars, vocabularies, school books, rules of arithmetic and mensuration, all are in rhyme.
But the prosody may fairly be discriminated as Common, Rare, and Fantastic: the first class is short and easy: the second is still more concise: and the third (which I exclude) forma the bulk of the vernacular treatises on the art.
Even in the first class, I have omitted about three quarters of the rules: retaining only what a learner requires: thus much may easily be learnt in a few days: the remainder embraced a variety of precepts intended to guide (in reality to shackle) versifiers: for were we to believe these pedants, it is almost impossible to compose a truly correct line: or a stanza free from ill omened letters.
