Dr. Campbell : “Nearly the whole body of the Telugu literature consists of poetry, written in what may be termed the superior dialect of the language; but so different is this from the inferior or colloquial dialect in common use among all classes of people, that even to the learned, the use of commentaries is indispensable for the correct understanding of many of their best works.” (Vide pp 12 and 13 of the introduction to Campbell’s Grammar).
Arden’s Telugu Grammar: “In Telugu the dialect used in ordinary conversation differs so much from that used in grammatically written books that thousands of Natives, who use the language as only the medium of conversation, cannot read a grammatically written book, or understand it, when read to them. For the same reason, a foreigner may be able to read and understand a Telugu book, but at the same time may be unable to converse with Natives, or understand what they say to him. Owing to this great difference between the colloquial and the grammatical dialect, in the present work the former has been kept entirely distinct from the latter.” (Vide page 4 of the preface).
“Upon opening a Telugu book written in the grammatical dialect, the student will find, that not only do the forms of the individual words differ very considerably from those used in common conversation, but that the words are so run into each other, and have their initial letters so altered, that the whole is rendered almost unintelligible.” (Vide Page 312).
80. When the majority of the Sub-Committee undertook to classify grammatical forms into archaic and current and filled the archaic column with so many as 359 archaic forms as against 246 which they call current they clearly admitted that the poetic dialect was archaic. But in appendix B of his defence Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu quotes with approval two passages from Brown’s essay on
