Telugu script

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Telugu
Type Abugida
Spoken languages Telugu
Time period c. 1500–present
Parent systems Proto-Canaanite alphabet
 → Phoenician alphabet
  → Aramaic alphabet
   → Brāhmī
    → Kadamba
     → Telugu
Sister systems Kannada
Unicode range U+0C01–U+0C6F
ISO 15924 Telu
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
The Brahmic script and its descendants

Brāhmī

Telugu script, an abugida from the Brahmic family of scripts, is used to write Telugu, a Dravidian Language found in the Southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh as well as several other neighboring states. The Telugu script is derived from the Telugu-Kannada script[1] and developed independently at the same time as the Kannada script which is why it has strong resemblance to it. [2]

Contents

[edit] Brahmi script and Telugu

The Krishna river valley/delta located in the coastal region of the state of Andhra Pradesh was the earliest place in South India where Buddhism spread from Bihar. Dharanikota/Dhanyakatakam was an important city in the Guntur district of this region. The Buddha preached at Dharanikota/Dhanyakatakam (Palden Drepung in Tibetan) and conducted the Kalachakra ceremony, which takes the antiquity of Amaravati (Dharanikota) back to the 6th century BCE.[3][4][5][6] Taranatha, the Buddhist monk writes: "On the full moon of the month Caitra in the year following his enlightenment, at the great stupa of Dhanyakataka, the Buddha emanated the mandala of "The Glorious Lunar Mansions" (Kalachakra) [7]. Bhattiprolu was another nearby town which was the capital of Sala Kings who ruled the area in pre-Mauryan times[8]. The Brahmi script used by Mauryan kings eventually reached Krishna delta and gave rise to Bhattiprolu script found on the urn containing Buddha's relics[9]. Buddhism spread to east Asia from the nearby ports of Ghantasala and Masulipatnam (ancient Maisolos of Ptolemy and Masalia of Periplus)[10]. The script also travelled giving rise to the modern Thai, Burmese, Javanese and Balinese scripts, which bear a strong resemblance to Telugu script[11][12] [13]. The Bhattiprolu Brahmi script evolved into the old Telugu-Kannada script by 5th century C.E[14][15][16][17][18][19]. The famous Muslim historian and scholar Al-Biruni called Telugu language and script as Andhri [20].

A number of early Satavahana coins and other remains were found in Tamil Nadu. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Satavahanas introduced the script to the Tamil country also. The Satavahanas were, for some time, vassals of the Mauryan Empire. Mauryan Emperor Asoka the great (reign: 269-232 BCE) and the rise of Buddhism played stellar roles in championing this spread of writing. There are direct or indirect references to 'lipi', 'likh', 'lekha', 'likhita' etc., in the literature belonging to the periods before this perceived spread of Brahmi.

[edit] Telugu inscriptions

[edit] Asokan Brahmi inscription

The reference to devānapiyena piyadasina indicates ashoka (devānāmpriya, priyadarśi) and sakyamuni refers to Buddha. Similar inscriptions have been found in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh.

[edit] Satavahana cave inscription

After 218 CE, the Satavahana dynasty was succeeded by its vassals, the Ikshvakus, whose script is shown in row 5 of figure T1. Although only three kings ruled in this dynasty, they commanded the love and affection of the people. Even today, anything very old is referred by Telugu people as 'that from the time of Ikshvakus.'

[edit] Ikshvaku inscription

The sixth row of figure T1 shows the north Indian Brahmi used by the Gupta empire in the fourth century CE. Although the northern and southern scripts are still very similar, we can notice the divergence from this point onwards.

[edit] Salankayana Nandivarma inscription

The Salankayana script of the fifth Century is given in the seventh row of figure T1. Salankayanas and Vishnukundinas were two of the many dynasties that succeeded the Ikshvakus. From their time, the script for Telugu and Kannada languages began clearly separating from that of the other south Indian and north Indian dialects. The following is an example of Salankayana inscription from fourth century CE. They ruled between 300 CE and 420 CE with vengi as the capital. Both Salankayanas and Vishnukundinas were vassals under pallava kings who ruled from southern Telugu and northern Tamil lands. Notice the change over from Prakrit to Sanskrit during this time.

Salankayanas were succeeded by Vishnukundinas kings from vinukonda. In fact, Vishnukundinas is a Sanskritized name for vinukonda. They ruled three or four central coastal districts between 420 and 611 CE from vinukonda, vengi and vijayawada. They seem to have patronized the great Kumarila Bhatta (c.686?-c.745?) who propounded Purva mimamsa' philosophy and his disciple Prabhakara Pandita. An inscription from their time is given below. Notice the reference to Lord Parvata Swami (of kOTappa konDa) and eleven Asvamedha yajnas. These kings followed the lead of Ikshvaku kings in performing the Horse sacrifices. The Pallavas also followed the same lead.

[edit] Vishnukundina inscription

Around the time of Vishnukundinas, a development of great significance in the history of Telugu language took place in the modern day rayalaseema. All the royal inscriptions till that day used either Prakrit or Sanskrit. This was in spite of the fact that there was a well developed local language in the Telugu land. Beginning with the Ikshvaku dynasty, the Royal courts started to increasingly replace Prakrit for its predecessor, the Sanskrit. By the time of vishnukundina dynasty, Sanskrit had gained a pre-eminent status. This powerful trend towards increasing Sanskritization was reversed by the Chola kings who ruled from renaadu. This corresponds roughly to the modern day Cuddapah, Eastern Chittoor, Southern Nellore and surrounding areas). They were vassals under the southern Pallava kings. They broke with the prevailing fashion and introduced the tradition of writing Royal proclamations in the local (Telugu) language. The earliest available inscription containing Telugu sentences comes from these Chola kings and is dated to 573-576 CE. These Telugu Chola kings had eventually gained prominence and filled the vacuum left by the end of Pallava dynasty. During the next fifty years, Telugu inscriptions appeared in the neighboring Ananthapuram and all the surrounding regions. Their act of patronizing Telugu over Sanskrit had caught on and other kings in the Telugu land had begun to follow their lead. The first available Telugu inscription in the coastal Andhra Pradesh comes from about 633 CE. Around the same time, the Chalukya kings of Telangana also started using Telugu for inscriptions.

[edit] Pallava Narasimha Varma I inscription

In the meantime, Pallavas were gaining prominence in the Tamil country. The origin of Pallavas is still a subject of speculation. They were perhaps the descendents of the Saka Pahlava warriors from ancient Iran. Over the centuries, they wandered over western India and sporadically waged wars with many dynasties. Satavahana kings subdued them around the time of Christ. They might then have settled in the northern Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. This area is still referred to as Palnadu or Pallava Nadu and is the scene of one the central events in Telugu history (the twelfth century war of Palnadu). These Telugu Pallavas eventually gained prominence and set up small kingdoms. As they grew more powerful, a branch of these Pallavas had migrated to the Tamil country. There they had established one of the most cherished kingdoms in Tamil history. Their capitol was Kanchi, close the border between Tamil and Telugu lands. Although they were responsible for the destruction of much of the composite Hindu-Buddhist-Jain legacy of Ikshvaku kings in terms of education, fine arts and architecture, they also took on the Ikshvaku zeal for building and sculpture and evolved their own styles. The earliest available inscriptions with Tamil content were from the time of the rise of Pallava influence. By the time Pallavas moved to the Tamil country from Telugu lands, Sanskrit gained its prominence in South India and displaced Prakrit. The Pallavas took this newfound interest to Tamil Nadu and patronized some of the most illustrious Sanskrit poets like Bharavi and Dandin. At that time, Tamil (and Sanskrit in the Tamil land) used to be written in the "pallava grantham" script. Row 8 of figure T1 lists this script. Modern Tamil script eventually descended from it. A great number of south-east Asian languages including Thai and Malay had adapted variants of this grantham script and Telugu script over the centuries. A detailed example is given below. The language used is Sanskrit.

[edit] Later developments

Although Kannada evolved from the southern sub-family of old Dravidian and hence has a greater affinity with Tamil than Telugu, the scripts of the two languages were tied together for over two thousand years. This was mainly possible because telugu nadu and its neighbor karri nadu (mostly consisting of the present day states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh) were ruled by several kings for over two thousand years who owed their origins and/or allegiance jointly to both regions. The Satavahanas influenced the northern Karnataka region for a long time before and after Christ. In fact, the earliest references to Satavahanas occur at the border between the modern day Andhra and Karnataka States. Bellari, Anantapur and Kurnool districts seem to be the first home of these kings. This region was the first to be referred to as Andhraapatha. Between the 8th and 10th Centuries, Rashtrakutas ruled from Karnataka over Karnataka and Maharashtra and dominated the Telugu land for brief periods of time. In the sixth century, Chalukyas began their ascent over Kannada country and eventually over Telugu lands. When the dynasty had branched off into Western and Eastern kingdoms, the eastern branch(es) had completely become Telugu speaking. Two of the The 'trinity' (ratna traya) of early Kannada literature Pampa, Ponna came from Vengi. More than any single ruling clan, it is the eastern Chalukyas who influenced the modern form of Telugu script and its affinity with modern Kannada script.

Rows 9, 10 and 11 of figure T1 show the Chalukya scripts from the seventh, tenth and eleventh centuries. The later two are traditionally referred as the Vengi script, after the capital of the Eastern Chalukya kingdom in modern day West Godavari District. Examples of this script were found all over the Telugu Nadu. Figures below give detailed samples.

Figure S8 gives the script at the time when the great poet Nannaya was composing Maha Bharatam at the court of Rajaraja Narendra.

The period of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries was a glorious era in Telugu history. It was the time of the Kakatiya Empire that spread from Warangal in Telangana to control all of the Telugu land directly or indirectly. The Kakatiya emperors presided over a multi fold flowering of arts and literature. Row 12 of figure T1 shows the script they used. The detail below comes from the time when the greatest of Telugu writers, tikkana somayaji was composing Maha Bharatam.

After the demise of the Kakatiya Empire, Telugu was ably supported by the Reddi kingdoms in central coastal districts during the fourteenth and fifteenth Centuries. To them belongs the credit of nurturing the great Errana and the incomparable Srinatha. The scripts of that time are shown in rows 13 and 14 of figure T1. (Notice the Telugu idiom of figure S11.)

The end of the Kakatiya Empire also sowed the seeds for the rise of the finest Empire in the South Indian history at Vijayanagara. This empire over saw the development of all the four southern languages for several centuries. Much has been written about this period. The script used for Telugu and Kannada during this time is shown in the last row of figure T1. This is very similar to the modern day written script.

The figure below shows one of the first instances of Christian Missionary writings in Telugu. It was published by Rev. Benjamin Schultze in Halle/Magdeburg (modern Germany). About half a dozen Telugu works were published in Europe at that time. Tamil had Christian writing and Bible translations from an even earlier time.

The only major change after this time is the regularization of the letters with the advent of modern printing.

Over the years, several subtle changes took place in the Telugu character graphs and spelling patterns.

C.P. Brown, an English employee of the British East India Company and eminent scholar played a significant role in adapting Telugu to the printing press. He and some others introduced changes in the script to better reflect the pronunciation patterns.

In addition to the above examples of formal script, written form of Telugu included a continuous writing style called "golusu kattu" akin to English hand writing where each letter of a word is combined with the previous letter in one continuous stroke of the pen. This form, although very popular till about the middle of the 20th century, is not used any more.

[edit] Vowels

Telugu uses fourteen vowels, each of which has both a singular form and a diacritic form used with consonants to create syllables. It is important to note that this language does make a distinction between short and long vowels.

Vowel (singular form) అ ఆ ఇ ఈ ఉ ఊ ఋ ౠ ఎ ఏ ఐ ఒ ఓ ఔ
Vowel (diacritic form) ా ి ీ ు ూ ృ ౄ ె ే ై ొ ో ౌ
Pronunciation [a] [aː] [i] [iː] [u] [uː] [ri/ru] [riː/ruː] [e] [eː] [aj] [o] [oː] [aw]

The singular form is used when the vowel occurs at the beginning of a word or syllable, or is a complete syllable in itself (example: a, u, o). The diacritic form is added to consonants (represented by the dotted circle) to form a consonant-vowel syllable (example: ka, kru, mo). It should be noted that అ does not have a diacritic form, because this vowel is already inherent in all of the consonants. The other diacritic vowels are added to consonants to change their pronunciation to that of the vowel.

Examples:

ఖ + ఈ (ీ) → ఖీ [kʰa] + [iː] → [kʰiː]
జ + ఉ (ు) → జు [dʒa] + [u] → [dʒu]

There are also several other diacritics used in the Telugu script. ్ mutes the vowel of a consonant, so that only the consonant is pronounced. ం and ఁ nasalize the vowels or syllables to which they are attached. ః adds a voiceless breath after the vowel or syllable it is attached to.

Examples:

క + ్ → క్    [ka] + [Ø] → [k]
క + ఁ → కఁ [ka] + [n] → [kan]
క + ం → కం [ka] + [m] → [kam]
క + ః → కః [ka] + [h] → [kah]

[edit] Telugu in Unicode

The Unicode range for Telugu is U+0C00–U+0C7F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

Telugu
Unicode.org chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+0C0x   ఁ ం ః   అ ఆ ఇ ఈ ఉ ఊ ఋ ఌ   ఎ ఏ
U+0C1x ఐ   ఒ ఓ ఔ క ఖ గ ఘ ఙ చ ఛ జ ఝ ఞ ట
U+0C2x ఠ డ ఢ ణ త థ ద ధ న   ప ఫ బ భ మ య
U+0C3x ర ఱ ల ళ   వ శ ష స హ         ా ి
U+0C4x ీ ు ూ ృ ౄ   ె ే ై   ొ ో ౌ ్    
U+0C5x           ౕ ౖ                  
U+0C6x ౠ ౡ         ౦ ౧ ౨ ౩ ౪ ౫ ౬ ౭ ౮ ౯
U+0C7x                                

In contrast to a syllabic script such as katakana, where one Unicode code point represents the glyph for one syllable, Telugu combines multiple code points to generate the glyph for one syllable, using complex font rendering rules. [21] [22]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Bhat, Raghunath (2001). PALAEOGRAPHIC ART OF INDIA AND SOUTH EAST ASIA. IGNCA. Retrieved on 2007-07-19.
  2. ^ Telugu script details.
  3. ^ The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Amaravathi gearing for Buddhist festival
  4. ^ The Hindu : Magazine / Events : On a mission for enlightenment
  5. ^ The Kalachakra Mandala
  6. ^ Buddha's Preaching of the Kalachakra Tantra at the Stupa of Dhanyakataka, H. Hoffman, in: German Scholars on India, Vol. I, 1973, PP. 136-140, Varanasi
  7. ^ Taranatha; http://www.kalacakra.org/history/khistor2.htm
  8. ^ The History of Andhras, Durga Prasad; http://igmlnet.uohyd.ernet.in:8000/gw_44_5/hi-res/hcu_images/G2.pdf
  9. ^ Ananda Buddha Vihara
  10. ^ The Great Stupa at Nagarjunakonda in Southern India-【佛学研究网】 佛教文化网 中国佛教网 中国佛学网 佛教信息网 佛教研究 佛学讲座 禅学讲座 吴言生说禅
  11. ^ My Telugu World.com Telugu words Telugu speaking Ramayanam Andhras Dravidian language Andhra society language myTelugu TeluguWorld Nizams of Hyderabad property sales ndhra pradesh AP Hyderabad
  12. ^ My Thais - Sepia Mutiny
  13. ^ Balinese alphabet, language and pronunciation
  14. ^ The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems by Florian Coulmas, p. 228
  15. ^ Vishwabharath by K. N. Murthy and G. U. Rao, http://tdil.mit.gov.in/TelugulScriptDetailsApr02.pdf
  16. ^ Indiain Epigraphy: a guide to the study of inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan languages, by Richard Solomon, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.40, ISBN 0195099842
  17. ^ Indian Epigraphy by Dineschandra Sircar, Motilal Banarsidass, 1996, p.46, ISBN 8120811666
  18. ^ The Dravidian Languages by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, 2003, Cambridge University Press, pp.78-79, ISBN 0521771110
  19. ^ K. Raghunath Bhat, http://ignca.gov.in/nl001809.htm
  20. ^ Ancient India: English translation of Kitab-ul Hind by Al-Biruni, National Book Trust, New Delhi
  21. ^ Developing OpenType Fonts for Telugu Script.
  22. ^ Unicode 4.0.0: South Asian Scripts.

[edit] References

1. tirumala raamacaMdra (1916-1997). "mana lipi puTTu poorvOttaraalu"

2. paMcaagnula aadinaarayana Saastri (1890-1951). "aaMdhra lipi pariNaamaM"

[edit] External links