A propos nothing, I am reminded of a quote from one of Gidugu's essays, in
which he wonders what "kaasaramulu meesaramulu gaavinchenu", (a line
appearing in neeti chandrika, probably describing something that
pingalakudu might have done) could possibly mean. As far as he could tell
(which was about a few parsecs :-)) the phrase was meaningless, and was
probably the result of a typo propagated over generations of telugu text
book printing. No one knew enough to be able to correct this, apparently.
Just an amusing side effect of a book for children (!) written in a
language that is next to impossible to understand.
....
[From Srinivas P. garu ]
> And when was Sanskrit spoken by "all"? As I see you subscribe to
> "Sanskrit-Digest". Was it ever said there that even common folk spoke
> Sanskrit? On similar lines Latin was n't spoken by "all" in Europe.
If you look at plays like mRchakaTikam, only the educated upper-class male
characters spoke actual sanskrit, while the lower class and female
characters spoke some form of prakrit. (I haven't read the play first-hand
in Skt, my source is a critical introduction of an english translation).
>From my understanding, the sanskrit of the Vedas was probably widespread
as a common language among the "vedic people" (how's that for neatly
sidestepping the Aryan-Dravidian controversy? :-)), whereas the refined
Sanskrit of PaNini was in many respects an artificial tongue, synthesized
from the various Prakrits of that period. Knowledgeable telusa-ers please
elucidate.
Bapa Rao