In another place “Tamil has ndu or ttu vulgarly pronounced chchu” (Ibid p.296). If so-called vulgar forms are to be considered corruptions of literary forms and as being “irregular forms of expression which are either the result of the violations of accepted rules of grammar or are produced by means of contractions or other modifications due to hurry, indifference and ignorance’’ then from the evidence of Tamil which had the least contact with NonDravidian languages, forms with chu or tsu must be considered corruptions of forms with tu (vide Caldwell’s grammar p.3 82).
23. The late Professor Seshagiri Sastri of the Presidency College, Madras gave a higher status to forms with tu than to forms with tsu. I give below a translation of his remarks in this connection.
“The ancient present tense forms were considered as gramya (non-literary or vulgar) even in the time of Nannayabhatta and others, and were rejected. But a comparison with the corresponding verbal forms in Canarese, Tamil and Malayalam will show that these alone are suddha forms (i.e. correct, or in conformity with the genius of the Dravidian languages) Vide page 32 Telugu philology. (Verbs)
24. In Telugu the participle in tu or utu is much older than the earliest grammar of the poetic dialect which was compiled by Ketana in the latter part of the 13th or the early part of the 14d century. In the Nellore inscriptions published by Mr. Butterworth, the first instance of a verbal form with St occurs in an inscription of 1208 A.D
(Ongole No.76 p.1035). Finite verbs do not occur with frequency in lithic records and where they occur, they are generally past forms of the donative verb or and st occurs in the first personal forms. Of the dated Nellore inscriptions of the 13th century 20 use first personal past forms of or Of these 15 use the form istimi. Five use other verbal forms with St.
