treatises regarding this are extremely numerous, but involved in a pedantic obscurity which has much increased the difficulty of a subject in itself not easy. The natural result has been, that the study has fallen into disuse; and while the Sanscrit system, on which it is founded, is still known, in a certain degree, to all Telugus who pretend to any learning, few have had the resolution to master the greater difficulties of the prosody of their native language.
It is not however, the less necessary that this subject should meet with its share of attention. Not only is all Telugu literature, both original and translated, inverse, but the rules of arithmetic, mensuration, rhetoric, and grammar, not to mention other branches of learning and art, have also been framed in metre.
These have been handed down to the present day by a succession of transcribers ignorant of poetry, and in most instances of the signification intended by the author; and the manuscripts have accordingly fallen into a state of great dilapidation.
Such has been particularly the case with those most in request; and in works for this reason most frequently transcribed; so that when, in other manuscripts, a comparison of three or four copies, with the aid of prosody, has usually proved the true reading, the author of the present tract has sometimes found in the Maha Bharata and Bhagavata six and seven variations in one passage; nay, in one word.
Nor is Telugu prosody so very intricate a subject when properly explained; in principle, indeed, it will be found to be much more simple and easy than the Greek and Latin systems. In the Telugu,
