95. Before we discuss the question of prose in the Kavya dialect it is necessary to form some idea of the nature of that dialect and its tradition.
96. The Kavya dialect was the product of a condition of society dominated by narrow social, political and literary ideals. The masses lived and laboured for the benefit of the aristocracy and the education of the sudra was a crime.
97. The education of the masses was no part of the orthodox tradition. Learning and literature were the monopoly of the Brahman to whom Sanskrit precedent was sacred and inviolable. Telugu literature originated under Sanskrit influence and as the beginnings of Telugu literature synchronised with the decadence of Sanskrit literature, the conventions of language and art which characterised that decadence, fixed themselves on Telugu literature.
98. The Kavya dialect was a poetic dialect. In the absence of mass education or democratic religious movements, the Telugu poets did not feel the need for prose. Prose pieces, no doubt, entered into poems. There, the poet sought relief from composition in metres which taxed all his resources. Sometimes a single word, sometimes a prose sentence, served as a useful link in metrical naffation. The longer prose pieces generally differed from verse only in not being thrown into a metrical mould. Old literary Telugu was a poetic dialect. Its development was determined by the needs of a highly conventional poetical literature with a complicated system of versification. Words and grammatical forms which expressed set ideas, or met certain, ever-recurring metrical exigencies, were retained in the language permanently as a valuable and indispensable asset.
