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Posted by on Jun 7, 2010 in TG Roundup

Telugu Bhasha Aavirbhaavamu

For several decades, a question has been lingering in my mind. It is about the chronological reconstruction of how Telugu language (not lipi) evolved, and I gave a title to that as ‘Telugu Bhasha Aavirbhaavamu.’

Of course, I haven’t come across any such piece so far.

Infact, when I was an editorial board member for the WTFC (World Telugu Federation Conference) held in Singapore in 2001 or so, I requested Dr Madugula Nagaphani Sarma garu to write an article for us. He was kind to write an essay praising the beauty of the language. I also remember that he mentioned to me he is only a poet, not a linguist.

Many a time I thought of posting this request to RB group whether any such work is done, and I will be very excited to read.

My axioms are that
– Telugu is much older than the oldest script (Telugu Lipi) we know of;
– There shall have existed poetry much before Nannayya;
– There shall have existed prose much before that poetry;
– There shall have existed geyalu (songs) much before that prose;
– There shall be a period of Telugu which we cannot deciper just with our current day known grammar
– The reason being, grammar itself would have developed, refined, codified much after a wide spread use of Telugu, could be words, sentences, phrases, songs, and other poetic forms.

Many times I am surprised to see similar sounding words in even Australian Aboriginal words and I think I have seen the letter ‘ra’ is exactly similar between Telugu and Sinhalese.

I will be very glad to hear if anyone shares similar ideas or have come across some work done in those directions.

1 Comment

  1. Saradhi garu,

    Good piece. I don’t have much to add.

    I have been collecting a lot of web articles on evolution of Telugu. Unfortunately, I have not been placing the collection in one place.

    One of the fascinating things I have seen is a the evolution of Telugu and Kannada scripts from about 1000 AD.