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standards for judging the quality and usefulness of tongues than the whims of Grammarians of old linguistic strata. The Telugu literary dialect contains many obsolete grammatical forms, an inconveniently large mass of obsolete words and arbitrary verbal contractions and expansions which were necessitated by a system of versification based both on alliteration and on quantity. A license, which, no doubt, has its own advantages of introducing Sanskrit words to an unlimited extent has been but too eagerly availed of by poets who brought glossaries into requisition, revelled in fantastic compound-formation, and made the Telugu literary dialect doubly dead. This is not the place to dilate on the question of linguistic reform; but thus much might be said. If it is intended to make the Telugu literary dialect a great civilizing medium, it must be divested of its superfluous obsolete and Sanskrit elements, and brought closer to the spoken dialect from which it must be thoroughly replenished. There is not much dialectical difference in the Telugu generally spoken in the various parts of the Telugu country; so a new common literary dialect can be established with comparative ease if only able writers set about it in right earnest.

Recently, I happened to read Brahmavivaham by Rai Bahadur Viresalingam Pantulu Garu and found that there were some parallel passages in our plays, a thing perfectly natural considering that his piece traversed the whole field of Brahmin marriages. But it will be seen that these plays have little else in common, our treatment being essentially different. Brahmavivaham was meant to be a pure comedy of manners, while in Kanyasulkam humour, characterization, and the construction of an original and complex plot have been attempted - with what success, it is for the public to judge.

Vizianagram,
1st January 1897.

G.V.A.