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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
In Telugu, unlike any other Dravidian language except Kui-Kuvi, there is a very numerous class of words of native origin, beginning with a consonant group of which the second element is r, e.g. krovvu, trādu, prōlu, mrānu, vrāyu, sraggu. These are all common words of some antiquity and most of them have doublets in which the r has been dropped, as in kovvu, in accordance with the Common Dravidian tendency to avoid initial consonant groups, which is shared with Prakrit. Sometimes there are three forms, as tirika a twist, trippu, tippu to cause to turn. Trikku a twist, has only this form and is presumably not popular, while tikka crazy, is also written trikka.
1 Old Kanarese forms, i.e. before p becomes h and final continuants assume u, are cited, unless otherwise stated.
1 (i) Assimilation of r, etc. with a following consonant, as in Kanarese, is rare in Telugu, and the conditions under which it occurs have not been formulated (contra Burrow, BSOS., IX, 720, assumes its existence, although not essential to his argument), (ii) An intrusive r has to be assumed, for which there is no warrant. The well known example in Apabhramśa Vrāsu for Vyāsa, Hem., iv, 399, is unexplained and, in any case, irrelevant. The normal form is Vāsu, which could have been associated with Te. vrāsi-konu to write down, which, unlike all other words with initial conjuncts, never loses its r.
1 See Firth on the variants of u in Tamil, Arden, Tarn. Gram.4, xxx.
1 The Candravyākarana of Candragomin (c. A.D. 680) says that -l- can be substituted for old -d-, e.g. valabhi-, nāla- (Ta. vali, Ma. vali to drip; Ta. Ka. nāli, hollow stalk, are of some antiquity). Lüders states that this is attested in increasing frequency in (principally Buddhist) inscriptions from about A.D. 634 (Renou, Etudes de gmmmaire sanscrite, § 8). Renou considers that this process has no connection with -l- for -d- in the Kanva recension of VS (the Bāskala and Śākala recensions of RV represent -d- with a symbol), which has always been interpreted as cerebral l from the Marathi l (first brought into use about the seventeenth century), instead of the southern l, which is found as early as the fifth century. The possibility of a connection need not, therefore, be discarded. But see Burrow, TPS., 1946, 23, where nadá, nalá- are cited. The Karnātaka-bhāsā-bhūsana of Nāgavarma (c. A.D. 1120), Su. 10, gives the Kanarese letters l, r, l as equivalents of Sk. l, r, d. For Sk. lola, etc., Burrow has a different explanation, BSOAS., XI, 615–616. See also JOR., ix, 202, Tamil L, on the Telugu equivalents of this letter.
1 Burrow, BSOAS., XI, 130, has explained kittu (the form given by Sankar.) as a borrowing, but the word does not occur elsewhere. It may therefore be explained as for *kritti < *kiriti, *kiritu.
1 Perhaps Pliny's modogalingam represents mudugalinga the old Kalinga, not the three Lingas (Campbell) or the three Kalingas (Cunningham).
2 > Rman.