preserved in palm-leaf manuscripts.*[1] They will find their progress in' perusal much facilitated by it; and the poems being transcribed Upon paper, afterwards bound in convenient volumes, a reference to any particular passage will at once become easy. Palm-leaf manuscripts, on the other hand, besides the impossibility of correcting an error, and other inconveniencies, possess no facility whatever for reference t .....
In the present volume also, a small approximation has been attempted towards an improvement in Telugu printing, which the author has long had in view. Printing in this language has hitherto been in the same state which was originally the case in Europe; we find that after the discovery of this invaluable art'it was endeavoured to render printed books as like as possible to manuscripts; for it was imagined that this invention could only be approved in proportion as it imitated them; it being not as yet pereeived that it could far excel the art of writing.†[2]
Such is the state of Telugu printing also at the present day; it has been endeavoured to assimilate it as much as possible to the native manuscripts; neither the words nor sentences being divided : and the inconveniencies they presented to the student will at once be
- ↑ * As a means of finding places required in manuscripts none of which correspond in the paging, I first have a copy prepared on paper, numbered throughout, and then cause all the leaves of the various manuscripts to be marked with the number of the asvasa, or section, and that of the first verse occurring in it. This arrangement renders comparison very easy, and is less obvious than, after explanation, it may seem to be.
- ↑ † Beckford, History of Inventions.
