Official Language of - Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Puducherry
Spoken by - 74 million

Telugu is spoken principally in the state of Andhra Pradesh, south-eastern India. With about 70 million speakers, it is the most widely spoken of the four major Dravidian languages of southern India, each of which is recognized as an official provincial language by the Indian constitution. The Telugu alphabet most closely resembles that of Kanarese, both of them having developed out of the Grantha script, which appeared in India about the 5th century A.D.

Telegu is a richly developed language and the biggest linguistic unit in India, second only to Hindi. Linguistically, the language has deviated a good deal from its southern sisters Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam. It is the state language of Andhra Pradesh. It's an old one too, with origins as early as the 1st century AD, or perhaps even before as one of the later Vedas (700BC) mention the Andhras, another name for the people of Andhra Pradesh. Early inscriptions of the language date from around the 6th century, but a proper literary career starts five centuries later. The script, almost similar to that of Kannada, took shape in 1000AD from the Pahlava script of 7AD.

History of Telugu:

Most literatures began with translations from Sanskrit. So did Telegu with Nannayabhatta (1020AD), the adikavi or 'first poet' of Telegu translating the Mahabharata. It was a unusual translation, with lots of clever innovations but no deviations from the story. But Nannayabhatta couldn't complete the job. Tikanna came along sometime in the 13th century and furthered it. However, it was Yerrapragada (14th century) was finally able to clinch it. Nannaya, Tikanna and Yerrapragada are known as the kavitraya or 'the three great poets' of Telegu for this mammoth effort. Other such translations followed, like Marana's Markandeya Purana, Ketana's Dasakumara Charita, Yerrana's Harivamsa and others. Shaivite (in praise of Shiva) works like Sivatattwa Sara, Basavapurana and Panditaradhya Charitra were a part of this initial stash too.

By the time the Telegu poets wrote down some original stuff along with translations, it was almost the end of the 14th century. Slowly but steadily they picked up, some landmarks being Srinatha's Sringara Naishadha, Potana's Dasamaskandha, Jakkana's Vikramarka Charitra and Talapaka Himmakka's Subhadra Kalyana. Literary activities flourished, especially during the mighty Vijayanagara emperors. The 16th century was the golden age in the history of Tamil literature, thanks to the king Krishna Deva Raya. The raja, a poet himself, introduced the prabandha (a kind of love poetry) in Telegu literature in his Amukta Malyada. He had in his court the Ashtadiggajas (literal: eight elephants) who were the greatest of poets of the times. Original verse compositions and stories were written in a new zeal. Of those eight, Allasani Peddana (1510-1575AD) is known as Andhra Kavita Pitamahudu or 'Grandfather of Andhra Poetry'.

In the following years, poets still wrote their prabandhas, but kind of overdid on the love bit which make some critics dismiss it as 'a decadent age'. Of the dozens of poets of the 18th to mid 19th century, the only bright spot was Kankanti Paparaju whose Uttara Ramayana in campu style and the play Vishnumayavilasa were admirable. But other genres bloomed. Innumerable Yakshagansa or indigenous dramas of song and prose works were also produced. Tyagaraya of Tanjore (19th century) composed devotional songs in Telegu which form the repertoire of the classical ragas of South India.

Although the first printed Telegu book was out in 1796, it took some time before the modern period in literature set in. Young men acquainted with English literature tried to imitate Shelly, Keats and Wordsworth, and a new type of romantic poetry called the Bhavakavithwa was born. Bengali novelists like Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Ramesh Chandra Dutta were a major influence on modern Telegu fiction. Viresalingam Pantulu (1848-1919) wrote the first novel in Telegu, Rakashekharacharitramu. Other writers joined forces to build modern Telegu literature, like the dramatist Dharmavaram Krishnamachari, Chilakamarti Lakshminarasimham (also called the 'blind poet of Andhra Desha') the poets and dramatists Gurujada Apparavu and D. Krishnamacharlu.

The literary group Sahiti Samiti was set up in 1921, and their 'progressive and rationalist' journal Sahiti was followed by several others. Even now many writers preferred the old traditional style, like Tirupati Venkata Kavulu, Sripada Krishnamurthy Shastry and Vavilakolanu Subbarao. The other school was that of the Neo-classicist group of Sri Vishwanatha, Katuri, Pingali, Gadiyaram, G. Joshuan and others. Today the drama, novel, short story, essay and criticism in Telegu have reached high standards although they started only a century ago.

Welcome to Telugu Literary Home Page! In this age of information revolution, it is not the books in the libraries, but the electronic pages that are browsed for information. These pages are a humble effort to match the desperate need for authentic and comprehensive information about Telugu language and literature on cyberspace. We hope that in time this evolves as an encyclopedia of Telugu language. These pages are still in their infancy. Please join us in paying a loving tribute to Telugu language

Telugu is one of the few languages that has borrowed and absorbed everything from every language of the period it evolved and grew in. Telugu script or characters closely resemble Kannada and there now seems to be evidence that they were derived from the Kannada writing of the Calukya dynasty.

Telugu belongs to the family of Dravidian languages and is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is also one among the 22 official national languages of India. In India, Telugu is the most spoken mother tongue after Hindi. 19th century Englishmen called it the "Italian of the East" as all words in Telugu end with a vowel sound and are often quite melodic to the ear.

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Telugu is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh and the secondmost spoken language in India after Hindi. Internationally, it is spoken in Malaysia, Fiji, Singapore, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Telugu is regarded as a very sweet language because of itspronunciation with many open syllables. In the past, Telugu was knownas "Tenugu", which means "as sweet as honey". It's admirers call it the' the Italian of the East'.

Telugu Language

The word telugu is that it comes from the word trilinga, i.e. from the three temples at Srisailam, Drakasharamam, and Kaleshwaram.

Telugu is the official language of the state of Andhra Pradesh in southeastern India where it is spoken by close to 70 million people. Telegu is a richly developed language and the biggest linguistic unit in India.It is closely related to the Kannada alphabet. The main languages spoken in Andhra Pradesh are Telugu, Urdu, Hindi, Banjara, and English followed by Tamil, Kannada, Marathi and Oriya. Telugu is the principal and official language of the State.

History of the Telugu language:

It was also referred to as 'Tenugu' in the past. 'Andhra' is the name given to it since the medieval times. Some argued that 'Telugu' was a corruption of 'Trilinga' (Sanskrit meaning three 'lingas'). A general description of the land of the Telugus was made in the medieval times as 'the land marked by three lingas of the three famous shrines of Draksharamam (East Godavari district), Kaleswaram (Karimnagar district) and Srisailam (Kurnool district).

Telugu is the most widely spoken language of the Dravidian family which consists of 24 languages spanning the entire South-Asia, from Baluchistan to Sri Lanka. In terms of population, Telugu ranks second to Hindi among the Indian languages. According to the 1981* Census, Telugu is spoken by over 45 million in Andhra Pradesh. It has also spread to the other parts of the globe, i.e., Burma, Indo-China, South-Africa and the U.S.A. Being a mellifluous language, it is called, by its admirers as the 'Italian of the East'.

Telugu originated from the Proto-Dravidian language. It probably split from Proto-Dravidian between 1500 BCE and 1000 BCE, which was roughly the same time the Tamil language became distinct in terms of literary activity[1]. Telugu belongs to the Central Dravidian language subfamily, whose members originated from the Proto-Dravidian spoken in the central part of the Deccan plateau. Other languages of the central group include the rustic Gondi, Konda, Kui and Kuvi languages, all of which are linguistically closest to Telugu.

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