138. It is precisely such principles that are lacking in the shapeless prose of the Neo-Kavya school. This movement was never strong in western scholarship, and the vagaries of writers who were generally poor scholars, were not controlled by the literary critic and the scientific student of language. Even to-day there is no literary criticism in Telugu and a scientific study of the language has only just begun.
139. Rao Bahadur K. Veeresalingam Pantulu who is considered to be the leader of the Neo-Kavya school, published a grammar and a work on rhetoric , and the two works are incorporated in his collected works, thereby showing that he holds by them even now. There is not a single word in either work about breach of the rules of sandhi in prose. No attempt is made in these books or elsewhere in his collected works to reduce to a system his own violations or the violations of other writers.
140. The first volume of Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu’s autobiography which was recently published is significantly silent about Mr. K. Veeresalingam Pantulu’s reform of the poetic dialect. The book describes in great detail the struggles of social reform in the last century. The author was hardly conscious that he led a reform in the world of letters, nor seemed to realise the magnitude of the problems which were raised by that reform.
141. Nor has any other writer of the Neo-Kavya school analysed the incidents of sandhi in the writings of his school. One or two general principles are vaguely laid down by writers like Mr. K.V. Lakshmna Row but these principles do not accord with actual practice. Mr. K.V. Lakshmana Row opines that breach of sandhi in the middle of a sentence conduces to making the meaning clear, the periods balanced, and the diction forcible. An examination of the prose of the Neo-Kavya school will show that violation of sandhi has in actual practice, produced effects far other than those which are claimed for it.
