every part of the country seems to be a gross exaggeration. I doubt if more than half a dozen common forms, foreign to grammar, could be thus collected”. So the spoken language of Mr. Lakshmana Row resolves itself into half a dozen forms or so. Even on this limited field, Mr. Lakshmna Row does not feel on firm ground. For, he opines that, “until a linguistic survey is undertaken and completed we shall have no reliable data to arrive at a conclusion as to the universal existence of any forms.”
17. It may be pertinently asked how did Mr. Lakshmana Row manage to fill column current in his lists with more than two hundred forms when he did not feel sure what forms were really universally current in the Telugu Country? Mr. Lakshmana Row has kept us in the dark as to the process by which he determined the universal currency of his current forms: particularly of the two ungrammatical forms above quoted and of four individual nonliterary words which he has admitted into his current lists, namely
ఎనిమిది మంది, తొమ్మిది మంది, తొమ్మండుగురు, తోవ.
One important grammarian Mr. Arden who treated also the dialectal variations of the Ceded Districts does not include the first two among current forms; on the other hand, he lays down a principle according to which they would be incorrect even in spoken speech: “Masculine and feminine cardinals use a different form from the neuter cardinals; but in common conversation these forms are only used as far as the number nine. After the number nine the masculine and feminine cardinals are expressed by the neuter cardinal forms with the word మంది persons added to them”.
18. The forms ఎనిమిది మంది and తొమ్మిది మంది are not generally current in this part of the country. I have not met with them in current literature, not even in the literature written in Modern Telugu. So Mr. Lakshmana Row’s condition of affiliation fails in respect of forms which he himself has countenanced.
