then to classify archaic forms into two classes, namely, forms used by the leading prose writers of the day, and forms not used by them. It was open to the majority of the Sub-Committee to illuminate the classification by deducing from the practice of each writer any rules which governed his acceptance or rejection of particular archaic forms.
172. But the majority of the Sub-Committee did nothing of the kind. They did not analyse the prose of the leading prose writers to ascertain their use of archaic forms, because such a troublesome process was foreign to their methods of work. They simply classified some individual words and typical forms into two classes, archaic and cuffent. By archaic they only meant words whose use in prose they did not countenance. The Archaic was something arbitrary. It was what Mr. V. Venkataraya Sastri and Mr. K.V. Lakshmana Row, two prose writers who had the advantage of being on the Sub-Committee, did not choose to use in their prose, or to be more correct, do not choose to use hereafter. Rao Bahadur K. Veeresalingam Pantulu and Mr. Ch. Lakshmi Narasimham who are placed at the head of the Neo-Kavya School had no voice in the matter.
173. The Committee decided that in respect of archaic forms usage in literature was the standard.
The Sub-Committee were not entrusted with discretionary powers to sanction or disallow the use of particular archaic forms. They were simply to formulate the usage of leading prose writers. That was exactly what they did not choose to do.
RESULTS OF AN ANALYSIS OF CURRENT PROSE
174. I made an analysis of the language of some pages taken at random out of the following prose works.
