04-01-577
TELUGU.
577
In the Tamil country, the Telugu language is known as Va
ugu,
the northern language, from vaa,
north. Vaugu is apparently
derived from vaa in exactly
the same way as Telugu from teli. From Vaugu
is derived the names Waruga in old German books, and Badages which was used
by the early Portuguese and in the letters of St. Francis Xavier.
The Telugu country is bounded towards the east by the Bay of Bengal from about Barwa in the Ganjam District in the north to near Madras in the south. From Barwa the frontier line goes westwards through Ganjam to the Eastern Ghats, and then south-westwards, crosses the Sabari on the border of the Sunkam and Bijji Talukas in the Bastar State, and thence runs along the range of the Bela Dila to the Indravati. It follows that river to its confluence with the Godavari, and then runs through Chanda, cutting off the southern part of that district, and farther eastwards, including the southern border of the district of Wun. It then turns southwards to the Godavari, at its confluence with the Manjira, and thence farther south, towards Bidar, where Telugu meets with Kanarese. The frontier line between the two forms of speech then runs almost due south through the domi- nions of the Nizam. The Telugu country forther occupies the north-eastern edge of Bellary, the greater, eastern, part of Anantapur, and the eastern corner of Mysore. Through North Arcot and Chingleput the border line thence runs back to the sea.
Telugu is bordered on the north by O
iy
and the Hal
b
Dialect, G
and Mar
h,
on the west by Marh
and Kanarese, and on the south by Tamil.
Telugu is not a uniform language over the whole territory where it is spoken
as a vernacular. The dialect spoken in the Northern Circars is usually considered
as the purest form of the language. We have not sufficient materials for sketching
out the dialectic varieties existing in the various localities. Most of them
do not fall within the scope of this Survey. The dia- lects known from Northern
India do not differ much from the Standard form of the language. In Chanda,
for instance, the local Telugu is known under several denomi- nations such as
Kmu, Sl
wr, and Glar. In reality, however,
the difference in phonology and inflexional system is so unimportant that these
local forms scarcely deserve the name of a dialect.
Caste dialects of Telugu are also spoken in the Kanarese country and in Bombay.
Three such dialects have been returned for the use of this survey, Bra
and Dsar
from Belgaum, and Kmh
from Bombay Town and Island. A similar dialect is the so-called Vaar,
spoken by a vagrant tribe in the Bombay Presidency, Berar and other districts.
None of them, however, differs much from the ordinary form of the language.
On the other hand, the difference between the conversational language and the literary form is considerable. This point will be mentioned in connexion with Telugu literature in what follows.
The greatest part of the speakers of Telugu live outside the territory included in the operations of the Linguistic Survey. It is only from the Central Provinces and the Berars that estimates of the number of speakers have been made for the purposes of this survey For the other districts the figures given below have been taken from the reports of the Censuses of 1891 and 1901.
4E