A common centre should be established on the borders of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to house all material available so that linguistic scholars of both States can access them with equal ease and continue their research, Deccan Archaeological and Cultural Research Institute director Kurra Jitendra Babu said.
Mr Babu, an independent researcher, has a good command over Prakrit, Pali, Sanskrit, Marathi, Hindi, English and Telugu. He, however, does not make a big deal about knowing so many languages. A lot of people in Telangana know more than four or five languages, he says and cites former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao as an example. He said this was because the region had very close geographic links with Maharashtra (Marathi), Karnataka (Kannada) and Hyderabad (Urdu).
Mr Babu was here to present a paper on ‘Ancient Telangana Literature and Culture’ at the two-day literary conference jointly hosted by the World Telugu Federation (WTF) and the Mummaneni Subba Rao Siddhartha Kalapeetham. Speaking to The Hindu, he said that each State could earmark 50 acres each on the border and build a research centre there. The palm-leaf manuscripts and other evidences could be safeguarded at the research centre, he added. Mr Babu said that according to him no serious research was being done into the origin of languages. Postulates like that the first exponent of Telugu language was Adikavi Nanayya were being questioned.
While Pali was the linguistic ancestor of Telugu spoken in Andhra region, a form of Prakrit was the linguistic ancestor of Telugu spoken in Telangana, Mr Babu said.
Sanskrit itself is a refinement of different types of Prakrit used by the different people of India, he says. The very fact that there are no Sanskrit manuscripts found in Kalinga kingdom (modern day Odisha) is evidence enough to say that Sanskrit is not the linguistic ancestor of Telugu, he says. No research is being done to prove or disprove these new theories, Mr Babu says and adds that unless the material is available to scholars of both the States there will be no more research.
