While the vernacular is thus gaining recognition, the Literary Dialect itself is approximating to the Spoken Dialect in the best modern prose which manifests great freedom of usage. Raj Bahadur K. Viresalingam Pantulu garu, the most Prominent figure in the Telugu World of letters at the present day, has set the example of laxity in the observance of the Law of interchange of soft and hard consonants after a drita nasal. Hardly a modern writer would escape censure if judged by rules of grammar and established usage, and in the school room. Pandits have relaxed insistence on rigid observance of rules of sandhi. The moral of this tendency to break through traditional restrictions is clear. The old Literary Dialect is felt to be an inconvenient instrument, and there is an unconscious effort to form a new Literary Dialect. My complaint is that this movement is illogically slow.
I view the Telugu Literary Dialect as a great disability imposed by tradition upon the Telugus. Let those who love fetters venerate it. My own vernacular for me, the Living Telugu, the Italian of the East in which none of us is ashamed to express our joys and sorrows, but which some of us are ashamed to write well. Literature in the Vernacular will knock at the door of the peasant and it will knock at the door of the Englishman in India. Its possibilities are immense.
No argument in favour of a Vernacular Literature is needed with persons who are conversant with the history of the English Dialects and the Prakrits, and I know it is : not arguments that will evolve a new Literary Dialect for Telugu. A great writer must write and make it. Let us prepare the ground for him.
The cause of Social Reform has received strong support from a recent decision of the Madras High Court in which a full bench consisting of Chief Justice Sri Arnold White, and Justice Miller and Munro ruled : "That a contract to make payment to a father in consideration of his giving his daughter in marriage is immoral and opposed to public policy within the meaning of Section 23 of the Indian Contract Act".
I had to contend with one difficulty in printing this book. There are many sounds in the Spoken Dialect which are not represented in the Telugu Alphabet. In the present state of Telugu phonetics, I had to content myself with indicating such sounds by a horizontal line placed over the nearest symbols, and I employed the Ardhanusvara after a nasal. The creation of new symbols and their adoption into type can be effected only after a more widespread recognition of the Spoken Dialect.
గురుజాడలు
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కన్యాశుల్కము - మలికూర్పు
