I do not exactly know how this name aandhramu came to be but how
this name is associated with us is a standard question in Telugu
literature at Bachelors level. In fact the origin of the words
"aandhramu - telugu - tenugu" as they came to be associated with the
language, region, and people of AP is the wide topic that is taught and
tested.
I think Sujatha Neelam 's AP home page i mentioned in my earlier post
on telugu home pages, has a reference to this topic. Also the Telugu
home page at bgsu has some articles on this topic.
According to aitarEya brAhmaNamu the 100 (or was it 50) sons of Viswamitra
that defied him on the issue of adopting SunaSSEpa were banished by him
to be uncultured (please refer to the texts for more accurate info).
They migrated south and settled as the races Sabara,Yaksha,nAga,...,Andhra
etc. That I believe is the earliest known reference to the Andhra race.
The Bharata and Bhagavata also refer to the aandhra race. aandhras are
supposed to have fought on the side of Kauravas in the MahaBharata war.
cANUra (the court wrestler of kamsa along with mushTika) was an aandhra.
This region was referred variously as andhra, andhaka, andhraka,
andhaapadeeyamu, in various historical references.
The first usage of this word for the Telugu language is I believe by
nannaya who described the Telugu grammar (in Sanskrit of course (;-) ! )
in aandhra bhaashaa bhooshaNam.
Then there is the word Telugu itself. trinaga, trilinga, ten (meaning
south in proto-dravidian), even tEne+agu are some of the suggested sources
of the association of these with our race,language and region. Then some
say as we have several words where the usage of both l and n is equally
widespread like 'mulaga-munaga' etc. the words 'telugu' and 'tenugu' share
the same origin.
ETukUri bala rAma mUrti, ganTi jOgi sOmayAji, khanDavalli brothers, are
some of the researchers that did pioneering research in this area.
I would be glad if someone who has the standard texts on these topics
could post the articles here or atleast send me mail about them.
Thanks in advance ( anticipation)
Regards,
---Sankaram
=================================================================== | SANKA RAMAKRISHNA | | e-mail : sanka@erc.msstate.edu | | home page : http://www.erc.msstate.edu/~sanka/ | | phone : 601-325-2526 (Work.) | ===================================================================