A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s4.1

c19.s4.1

In ancient times the Telugu country was often called Trilinga, the country which contained or was bounded by the three lingas of Kālahasti, Śrīśailam and Dākṣārāma, and Telinga-Telugu as the name of the country and language may well be traced to this word. It is also suggested that Tel(n)ugu comes from tene, ‘honey’ or tennu, ‘way’. The beginnings of the language can be traced from stone inscriptions of the fifth and sixth century A.D., and its basic elements have unmistakable affinities with Tamil and Kannada. But, from the beginning, the literary idiom depended very largely upon Sanskrit and the Janāśrayachandas, an early work on prosody, fragments of which have recently come to light, though it includes some metres peculiar to Telugu and unknown to Sanskrit, is itself written in Sanskrit throughout; the author was most probably the Vishnukundin monarch Mādhavavarman II (580-620), who had this title Janāśraya. The inscriptions of the dynasty are in Sanskrit with an admixture of Prākrit and Telugu words.