Re: grAndhikamu/grAmyamu

Sitaramayya Ari (ari@Oakland.edu)
Thu, 29 Feb 1996 20:58:26 -0500 (EST)

Vaaduka bhaasha or gramyamu if you like to call it that, differ from
region to region. In spite of that things written in vaaduka
bhaasha have wider audience than stuff written in grandhikam simply
because anybody who can read can understand them. To write in
vaaduka bhaasha, one has to think only of what to write and not
how to decorate it.

Now what exactly is grandhikam? Where did it come from? Who is it meant for?
I don't know the answer to the first question. But I can guess the
answers to the other two. In 16-17th centuries it looks like there were
two scripts for Malayalam: one for grandhikam, meaning to write Sanskrit
and the other to write Malayalam. Gradually only one script survived. In
the Telugu country also, Sanskrit was written in Telugu script (if you
don't believe, read Nannaya Mahabharatham!). Folks like me need a
Sanskrit-Telugu dictionary to understand the so-called Telugu works of
the ancient days. To cut the story short, the grandhikam Telugu (and
its grammar) was a product of having to accommodate Telugu words
in Sanskrit texts (in the really old days) or Sanskrit words in Telugu
texts (in more recent centuries). Now who is the grandhikam for? I would
hazard a guess again and say it was meant originally for Sanskrit
scholars who knew Telugu and these days for Telugu scholars with nostalgia.
For the Telugu folks who only know Telugu, there is always the good
old gramyamu.

Sitaramayya Ari.