19. Cuffency in every part of the country and in every section of the community is a utopian standard which brings a smile to one’s lips. Its utter impracticability is amusing enough; but the test of exceptional currency comes with a bad grace from persons who are wholly in favour of literary forms which have no living cuency and which have to be learnt with conscious effort. They are so remote from life on account of their archaism and artificiality that they produce a comic effect when imparted into actual speech.
20. If there are any grammatical forms which have a wide cuency in the Telugu country, I may say, almost universal cuffency, it is the verbal forms in which the conjunct consonant స్త్ (st) occurs, of which వస్తాడు (vastadu) is a typical example. Even according to his own principles of standardization which are not, however, laid down with much clearness or consistency, Mr. Lakshmana Row should have admitted them into his lists. In the absence of a linguistic survey we are not altogether helpless in determining questions of general currency. Modern conditions of life have set on foot migrations on an unprecedented scale. Courts, schools, colleges and offices are places where local peculiarities of speech of different districts and different sections of society are represented. The Railway is a School of dialects. The serious student of language does not lack opportunities of investigating dialectal variations. There is also an abundance of recorded evidence of the speech of various districts. To show their ubiquity I quote verbal forms in స్త్ (st) picked up at random from my own collection of books and manuscripts.
(i) In 1868 Major T. G. M. Lane, Telugu Translator to the Government of Madras, published by order of the Secretary of State for India, ‘A collection of official documents in the Telugu Language consisting of Urjees and other papers filed in Courts of Justice for the use of candidates for the Indian Civil Service’; from every district of the Presidency except Ganjam and Kurnool.
