Thread by @vakibs

In traditional Sanskrit scholarship, the works on grammar are a must for understanding word formation and meaning. So essentially, grammar replaces dictionary! In parallel, there will be descriptive word repositories grouped by meaning, similar to Thesauruses.

https://twitter.com/likeisawit/status/1353381473265434626

There were many European philologists who got stumped by the Indian system of grammar replacing lexicon. It is not just for Sanskrit, by the way. They were unable to understand why grammars of Telugu, for example, started off with rules which they thought should be in a lexicon.

Here is C.P. Brown, a British philologist, who wrote a grammar and dictionary for the Telugu language, and thus "civilized" the Telugu race. He is called the "Āndhra Bhāshōddhāraka" (the resurrecter of Telugu, no less).

He opines the following on Sandhi (grammatical liaison).

Telugu grammarians discuss several additional Sandhis to deal with Telugu inflection, which as a Prākrit, is softer than in Sanskrit. Brown dismisses need for them, saying they are used only by the poets. Idiotic and false. This is how the words are spoken in fast regular speech.

Sanskrit Samasas are omnipresent in Telugu, even today after two centuries of English lordship. But here is Brown, dismissing that Telugu people don't know how to use Sanskrit Sandhi. In fact, I am not sure if he even read the Telugu grammatical works.

Brown totally misses the point of why Sandhi is *fundamental*, because it traces etymology of the words, and thus their meaning.

So much for the "resurrector of Telugu". He basically removed the route to scholarship in language and for the creation of vocabulary in Telugu.

Brown basically jumbled up the traditional logical order of teaching grammar in Telugu (first the alphabet, then word formation, then compound words, then sentences etc.) in order to map it to English grammar. This is all to suit to his need of communicating with Telugu servants.

Follow up works in Telugu grammar, one by Reverend Arden, followed Brown's arrangement of idiotic Europeanized grammar and moved Sandhi and Samāsa to an appendix (used only by poets). But it seems Arden at least read Telugu grammar, see how it falsifies Brown's blunt statement.

The "Vyavahārika Telugu" movement by later Telugu scholars like Gidugu Ramamūrthi Panthulu etc., though well intentioned, is deeply corrupted due to the British mutilation of the grammar of Telugu. These "reformers" put on European lenses to look at their own language. 🙄🤦‍♂️

In fact, the level of dumbness that has percolated into the Telugu language, which is basically pidgnizing every other random word with English, is *entirely* due to the collapse of Vyākaraṇa amongst Telugu speakers (traditional grammatical knowledge of Sandhi & Samāsa).

Here is Brown stating his goals of writing on Telugu grammar: to learn the ways of the natives and to civilize them. Please note: the natives will be civilized only when they speak English.

It is remarkable that this stupid colonial perspective on language is what we have today!

Telugu was called "Italian of the East" by the Italian traveler Niccolo di Conti, who visited Vijayanagar Empire at its zenith. This epithet signifies the high status of Telugu due to its extreme closeness to Sanskrit roots (similar to Italian and Latin). But Brown disparages it.

Brown puts the discussion of etymology of Telugu words into the appendix, to the very last section. He had to add a few token elements on etymology for his work to be taken seriously as a grammar. He says "learned Telugu people have no clear notions" of their own etymology.

In his shafted arrogance, Brown was similar to Bishop Caldwell, whose "Dravidian Grammar" I critiqued in an earlier thread. Brown was not so full with racist bullshit as Caldwell, but he follows up on the same language theories. It is sheer bollocks.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1276507867634438146?s=20

In this thread, I discussed why the classification of Telugu as apart from Sanskrit is blatantly wrong and completely misguided by colonial racist bullshit about pristine races speaking proto-languages.

This misunderstanding caused great harm to Telugu.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1277018587841146881?s=20

The correct way to build vocabulary, even for Telugu, is through grammar. Not by a dictionary - a misguided European concept that was imposed on us. It should be done through a generative grammar, and augmented with thesauruses. Like Indians have done since ages. (End of thread)