been collected with five manuscripts procured with difficulty in various parts of this peninsula.
Had it been composed in times when Telugu learning was patronized, it would have been better preserved; but the compositions of a dark age however valuable are seldom preserved with any care.
This book, "The Seventy Tales of the Parrot" has the same title with the well known Sanscrit composition of which, however, it is not a translation but an imitation. The work seems incomplete, the author not having finished the whole, it is perfect as far as it goes. (Thus there are not in fact 'Seventy' Tales.)
The discrepancies in the various manuscripts of the book are very great indeed, whole lines being substituted one for another. It will therefore be very difficult to select a pure text.
The Hamsa vimsati is a work of the same description and the close resemblance in many passages shows that one must have been borrowed from the other.
Since writing the foregoing remarks I have persuaded Zuluri Appayya, a very eminent Telugu scholar to revise and correct the work. He has done this very carefully and successfully. He considers it to be superior in style and good taste
