The sweetness of the Telugu language ("Italian of the East")

Rashmun wrote:Scores of litterateurs, through centuries, may have enriched Telugu, but the language received attention in the world because of some classic remarks and efforts made by five outsiders also.

Coming to know about the prosperity of Vijayanagara empire “where pearls were sold in heaps on the streets at Hampi,” several foreigners visited it and spent a few days with emperor Sri Krishnadevaraya. They fell in love with Telugu while interacting with people in the vast empire. One such traveller from Italy, Nicolo Di Conti, called Telugu, the Italian of the East.

What promoted him to say so was that words in Telugu, like in Italian, would be pronounced crystal clear without the need for the speaker to spell any last letter silent as in English. Telugu words sounded musical to him as they would end with “du, mu, vu, lu” etc as in Italian.

None other than Tamil poet Subrahmanya Bharati praised Telugu for this sweetness, terming it as ‘Sundara Telingi’ in his famous song on national integration.

C.P. Brown (1798-1884), a British officer who worked at Kadapa, Machilipatnam and Rajahmundry, made relentless efforts for a renaissance of Telugu as he found “its literature dying”. “To revive literature of a language was an arduous task for one man, and he, a foreigner”.

He gave Telugus their first Telugu-English and English-Telugu dictionaries; brought out a ‘Misra Basha Nighantuvu” by including in it foreign words used by Telugus and districts’ dictionaries that dwelt on regional accents and published Vemana poems. These works today stand out as standard references. He collected over 5,000 Telugu manuscripts that threw light on various facets of Telugu and its people.

Brown, as judicial officer at Machilipatnam, delivered a judgment in Telugu, the first in Telugu history--a contrast to today’ situation wherein GO are rarely issued in Telugu.

The tombs of Brown and Sir Arthur Cotton, who built anicuts across rivers, were discovered recently at Landon and Darking by Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad, Rajya Sabha member, and Mandali Buddha Prasad, Official Languages Commission Chairman, after Herculean efforts.

None knew about Buddhist stupa at Amaravathi till it was discovered by Colin Maechenzie (1754-1821), a survey official. He preserved thousands of ‘kaifiats’ (local records) for posterity.

J. P. L. Gwynn, the last ICS officer in the State who lived up to 1999, played a key role in establishment of Telugu Akademi and in the conduct of the first World Telugu Conference in 1975 which he attended.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/when-foreigners-fell-in-love-with-telugu-language/article4227784.ece