The Telugu poetic dialect acquired fixity and became artificial because it was shaped by the pandit and came under the influence of Sanskrit. There is now a revolution in social and literary ideas, which will not permit the new literary language becoming the property of a learned priestly class. This silent revolution Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu ignores and talks of political revolutions as factors of linguistic change.
215. Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu says that the people do not want Reform and that they are fond of the old literary dialect. I do not suppose that the masses, or the people can have any partiality for an archaic and artificial literary dialect. Nor in fact, have the English educated laymen who constitute themselves knight-effants to fight the battle of old literary Telugu, shown any marked partiality for it.
No doubt, some memorials advocating the exclusive use of literary Telugu in literature and in schools were largely signed but there is little doubt that very few of the signatories understand the questions at issue. Such educational problems can be solved only by expert educationists and scholars.
216. With rare good taste, Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu compares the leaders of the Modern Movement to the three tailors of Tooley Street. Tailors have a useful part in life. They can mend old clothes. Sartor Resartus!4 May I not retort that the attempts of Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu and the handful of his Madras friends to stamp out Modern Telugu in the name of the Telugu Academy, resemble the equally laudable efforts of that good old Lady of Sydney Smith who armed with a broomstick manfully fought the Atlantic Ocean to keep it out of her little tenement?
217. By the bye, the few reforms which Mr. J. Ramayya Pantulu suggested after mature deliberation in pages 41 and 42 of his
