| Telugu - The Language of Honey |
| With 80 million speakers and the language of a thriving entertainment industry, Telugu is another language of consequence in the Indian subcontinent. This article probes the origins and history of this language. |
| Telugu is recognized as one of the languages of India and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh, home to the hi-tech capital of India, Hyderabad. The origins of Telugu, unlike most other Dravidian languages, lack satisfactory and conclusive evidence. However, Telugu words first made an appearance in the Maharashtri Prakrit anthology of poems titled "Gadhasaptashathi" created by the Satavahana king Hala in the first century BC. Thus, it can be concluded that Telugu-speaking people were probably the older peoples inhabiting the land between Krishna and Godavari before the advent of the Satavahana dynasties. |
| The first clear archaeological inscriptions in Telugu date back to the 7th century AD. The first known work of literature in Telugu was the "Mahabharata" written by Nannaya around the 11th century AD. The golden age of Telugu literature dawned around the 16th century AD under the patronage of the emperor Krishnadeva Raya of the Vijayanagar Era. |
| Some of the early landmarks in Telugu, prior to Raja Krishnadeva Raya's golden age, are Srinathudu's "Sringara Naishadham", Potana's "Dasamaskandham", Jakkana's "Vikramarka Charitra" and Talapaka Timmakka's "Subhadra Kalyanam". The king, an accomplished poet himself, introduced the "Prabandha" form of poetry in Telegu literature with his "Amukta Malyada". |
| His court was graced by the "Ashtadiggajas", considered to be among the greatest poets of that time. |
| A number of famous luminaries in Carnatic Music composed their works in Telugu. Thyagaraja, Annamacharya and Kshetrayya are some names in a large list of illustrious contributors. Modern composers like Mysore Vasudevachari have also chosen Telugu as their medium of composition. |
| The Telugu script is believed to have descended from the Brahmi script of the Ashokan era. Merchants took the Eastern Chalukyan script of Telugu to Southeast Asia where it is believed to have parented the Mon, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, C"am, Javanese and Balinese languages' scripts. Their similarities to the Telugu script are easily discernable. The appearance of the Telugu alphabet system is very similar to the Kannada alphabet, its closest cousin. |
| The Telugu script is largely syllabic in nature and is written from left to right in sequences of simple and complex characters. Since the number of possible syllables thus formed is very large, syllables are composed of basic units such as vowels ("achchu" or "swar") and consonants ("hallu" or "vyanjan"). The consonants in the consonant clusters take different shapes in reference to the context it is utilized in. Consonants are presumed to be pure consonants without any vowel sound in them. However, it is traditional to write and read consonants with an implied 'a' vowel sound. When consonants combine with other vowel signs, the vowel part is indicated orthographically using signs known as "maatras". The shapes of "maatras" differ greatly from the shapes of the corresponding vowels. A sentence in Telugu ends with either a single bar (called a "purna virama") or a double bar (called a "deergh virama"). Although Telugu has a unique set of symbols to depict numerals, Arabic numbers are extensively and more commonly used. |
| Thus Telugu, in effect, consists of 60 symbols in total, with 16 vowels, 3 vowel modifiers and 41 consonants. |
| Telugu is often considered an agglutinative language, wherein certain syllables are added to the end of a noun in order to denote its case. Grammatically, in Telugu, "Karta" (nominative case or the doer), "Karma"(object of the verb) and "Kriya" (action or the verb) follow a sequence. |
| This is one of several ways through which Telugu could be clearly classified as a Dravidian language. Telugu also has a "Vibhakthi" (preposition) tradition. Owing to the fact that virtually every word in Telugu ends with a vowel sound, European travelers in the 19th century often referred to Telugu as the "Italian of the East". |
| Although the first printed Telugu book was out by 1796, Telugu literature's renaissance set in later on in the early part of the 19th century. Heavily influenced by the works of Shelly, Keats and Wordsworth, young poets gave birth to a new form of romantic poetry called the "Bhavakavithwam" in the middle parts of the 19th century. |
| Telugu literature's Renaissance came full circle with Kandukuri Veeresalingam's book, "Rakashekharacharitramu", considered to be the first novel in Telugu. The colloquial form of literary usage, called "Vyavaharika Bhasha Vadam" followed suit with Gurajada Apparao and Gidugu Ramamurty with works like "Mutyala Saralu" and Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy's (also Founder of Andhra University) "Musalamma Maranam" and Rayaprolu Subbarao's "Trunakankatam" forming the pioneering examples of the new age in Telugu literature. |
| Today, Hyderabad's proximity to the arena of Information technology and the concerted efforts of Telugu-language proponents ensures Telugu's growing significance in the Information Technology sector and in the Computing scene. Time and effort will ensure that this mellifluous language will prosper, just as it had throughout the course of history over the centuries. |