Page:A grammar of the Teloogoo language.djvu/35

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NOTE TO THE INTRODUCTION,


In support of what I have ventured to advance, in the preceding introduction, on the subject of the structure and derivation of the Teloogoo language, it is peculiarly gratifying to me to be allowed to quote the high authority of my friend Mr. Francis W. Ellis, at the head of the Board of Superintendence for the College of Fort St. George, as contained in the following observations with which he has favoured me. The knowledge which this Gentleman possesses of the various spoken dialects of the Peninsula, added to his acquirements as a Sanscrit scholar, peculiarly qualify him to pronounce a judgment on this subject.


The real affiliation of the Telugu language appears not to have been known to any writer, by whom the subject has been noticed. Dr. Carey in the preface to his Sanscrit Grammar says—“The Hindoostanee and the Tamil, with the languages of Gujarat and Malayala, are evidently derived from the Sanscrit, but the two former are greatly mixed with foreign words. The Bengalee, Orissa, Maratta, Kurnata, and Telinga languages are almost wholly composed of Sanscrit words.” In the preface to a Grammar of the Telugu lately published by him he, also, says—“The languages of India are principally derived from the Sanscrit:” &c. “The structure of most of the languages in the middle and north of India, is generally the same, the chief difference in them lies in the termination of the nouns and verbs, and in those deviations from Sanscrit orthography which