statement. “The distinction between modern and old Telugu exists only in the imagination of reformers and is unintelligible to Telugu people. We have nothing in Telugu corresponding to old English. What they call Modern Telugu is nothing but the colloquial dialect.”
78. In his pamphlet Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu says, “The difference between the two dialects grammatically is no more than exists between the literary and the colloquial dialects generally.” But every student of the science of language knows that among conservative oriental peoples with an ancient civilisation, literary languages showed a tendency to acquire fixity, while the spoken languages changed, and as time went, widened the cleavage between the spoken and the written idiom. In his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages Mr. Caldwell says, “It is a remarkable peculiarity of the Indian languages that, as soon as they begin to be cultivated, the literary style evinces a tendency to become a literary dialect distinct from the dialect of common life with a grammar and vocabulary of its own.” (page 81). This tendency has been noticed by eminent authorities on the science of language. But I shall content myself with quoting from Professor Whitney.
“Thus far in the history of the world, this kind of conservative influence has usually been active only within the limits of a class; a learned or priestly cast has become guardian of the national literature and the conservator of the tongue in which it was written; while to the masses of the people both have grown strange and unfamiliar. Deprived of the popular support, the cultivated dialect has at once begun to lose its vitality; for no language can remain alive which is not answering all the infinitely varied needs of a whole community, and adapting itself in every part to their changes; it is stinted of its natural and necessary growth when it is divorced from general use and made the exclusive
