Old Telugu

Old Telugu
తెనుఙ్గు తెనుఁగు
An Old Telugu inscription found in Keesaragutta, Telangana reading "tolucuvānḍru" (c. 5th century CE)
Pronunciation	[ˈt̪enuŋgu], [ˈt̪enũgu]
Region	Andhradesa (modern-day Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, India)
Ethnicity	Telugus
Era	c.200 BCE - 1000 CE
Language family	Dravidian South Dravidian South Dravidian II Old Telugu
Early form	Proto-Dravidian
Writing system	Kadamba script Telugu-Kannada script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	oldt1249

Old Telugu (Old Telugu: తెనుఙ్గు, తెనుఁగు, romanized: tenuṅgu, tenũgu; Telugu: పాత తెలుగు, romanized: pāta telugu) is the earliest attested stage of the Telugu language.^[1] It is attested in various inscriptions, labels, and in early loanwords.

Old Telugu later evolved into Middle Telugu around 1000 CE, which then evolved into Modern Telugu around 1600 CE.^[2]

In Modern Telugu, the term used for Old Telugu is పాత తెలుగు pāta telugu. The first word, పాత pāta, meaning "old/ancient," is descended from Old Telugu ప్ఴాన్త pḻānta / ప్రాఁత prā̃ta, ultimately from the reconstructed Proto-Dravidian word *paḻan-(tta), of the same meaning. The word తెలుగు telugu is descended from Old Telugu తెనుఙ్గు tenuṅgu / తెనుఁగు tenũgu.

The reconstructed Old Telugu term for the Old Telugu language is ప్ఴాన్దెనుఙ్గు pḻāndenuṅgu / ప్రాఁదెనుఁగు prā̃denũgu. This word was not attested in Old Telugu, but functions as a neologism commonly used for descriptive purposes. The word consisted of the adjectival prefix ప్ఴాన్- pḻān- / ప్రాఁ prā̃-, and a sandhi form of the word తెనుఙ్గు tenuṅgu / తెనుఁగు tenũgu. The adjectival prefix is the same morpheme as ప్ఴాన్త pḻānta / ప్రాఁత prā̃ta, thus deriving from Proto-Dravidian *paḻan-.

Some of the earliest attestations of Old Telugu can be found as the loan words in Prakrit inscriptions and literature dating to the early CE, including in Gaha Sattasai where several words like attā, vāluṁki, pīluā, pōṭṭaṁ, vēṇṭa, etc. are said to be of Old Telugu origin. ^[3] A granite pillar in the Amaravati Stupa bears the Old Telugu word nāgabu dated variously between 2^nd century BCE and 2^nd century CE. A label found in Keesaragutta, reading tolacuvānḍru is dated to c. 400 CE. ^[4] The earliest recorded long inscription was discovered in Kalamalla, dated to 575 CE.^[5] Several Old Telugu titles were found in the stone inscriptions issued by Mahendra Pallava dated to c.600 CE.^[6] Addanki inscription, laid in 848 CE bears the earliest recorded Telugu poem in taruvōja prosody.^[7] Pre-Nannaya era of Telugu literature, prior to c.1100 CE is believed to be dominated by Jain poets, including Pampa, Jinavallabha, Malliya Rēcana and others, whose works have not survived to the present day. ^[8]

In Old Telugu, the inherited Proto-Dravidian consonantal system was fairly well preserved except for incorporating the feature of voicing from the earliest known period. Other phonological innovations include:

• Old Telugu maintained a three-way distinction of coronal consonants which includes, alveolar, retroflex and dental stops. ḏ was originally derived from PDr post-nasal *-ṯ- and constrasted with intervocalic trill -ṟ-. In very few cases -ḏ- did appear intervocalically, eg. caḏu (> ceḍu) vs. pāṟum but it was mostly an allophone of ṟ before n, eg. mūnḏu.^[9]
• Voiceless stops appeared at medial positions, by the simplification of geminates after a long vowel and a nasal, eg. *tōṇṭṭa > tōṇṭa (> tōṭa) 'garden'.
• Pre-plosive nasals are allophones in both Old and Modern Telugu; i.e., n before dentals, ṇ before retroflexes, ṉ before alveolars, ṅ before velars, ñ before palatals and m before labials.
• Aspirated consonants were borrowed from Indo-Aryan and were incorporated into the writing system, although colloquially the contrast of aspirated-unaspirated stops largely remained absent in most dialects and accents, even in Modern Telugu.
• Apical displacement was progressive for certain period of time, resulting in word-initial apical consonants in some words. This change was initiated in pre-historic times and is recorded historically, eg. *awanḏu > wānḏu ('that man'/'he'); puḻōl-> pḻōlu (> prōlu) ('city')
• Voicing of word-initial stops was progressive in some words. Both voiced and voiceless word-initials were recorded in inscriptions and might vary dialectally, eg. tūṟu > dūṟu ('to enter'); kaḍacina > gaḍicina ('that which is passed')

• nḏ has its reflex being voiced retroflex stop in Modern Telugu, <ṟṟ> was either pronounced [r:] (derived from /r/) or [t:] (from PD *ṯṯ), former became rr while latter became ṭṭ, eg. goṟiya > goṟṟe > gorre; puṟṟa > puṭṭa.^[10]
• ḻ became a plosive other than in clusters where it became r by Middle Telugu, *kuḻ-, *eḻu-paHtu > OTe. kḻocce, ḻebb(h)adi > MTe. krocce, ḍebb(h)adi > Te. kocce, ḍebb(h)ai. Some of the initial retroflexes became dental, e.g. *uẓupp- > duppi.
• Most pre-plosive nasals got deleted by nasalizing the previous vowel in Middle Telugu and later loosing nasalization in Modern Telugu, eg. teluṅgu > telũgu > telugu and other various cluster simplifications like krōlu > kōlu.^[11]
• Modern Telugu is mostly free from retroflex ḷ and ṇ. However, dialectally ḷ is preserved as a geminate in plurals (from PDr plural *-Vḷ) as in *nīr-ḷ(u) > nīḷḷu ('waters') and regularly after retroflex ḍ and dental l, eg.: guḍi-ḷu > guḷḷu ('temples') and pagul-ḷu > paguḷḷu ('breakages').

Old Telugu is an agglutinative language primarily utilizing suffixes to express grammatical relationships. Noun morphology included gender markers and various derivational processes, while verb morphology was highly developed with distinct markers for tense, mood, and aspect.

Old Telugu preserved the two-way masculine vs non-masculine gender pattern intact, which is said to be the original case with Proto-Dravidian and this is also inherited by Modern Telugu.

Telugu branch is evidenced to have inherited all the four distinct plural markers of Dravidian, which are: -ḷ, -(n)k, -kVḷ and -r. By the time of early writings, -kVḷ marker underwent back-stem formation with the root words, losing its status as a distinct plural marker, eg. mrā̃-kulu (< *maran-kVḷ), later getting analyzed as mrā̃ku-lu, creating a root mrā̃ku (> Modern māku). Other examples include goḍugu, ciluka, eluka, īga.

The noun formative was -ambu, later -ammu >- amu > -am > -aũ, eg. OTe. paṭṭambu ('authority/power') > MTe./Te. paṭṭamu/paṭṭam > spoken Te. paṭṭaũ (coastal dialects).

Old Telugu and Proto-Dravidian maintained contrast in nominative and oblique forms of masculine singulars; as in wāṉḏu (nom.) vs wāni- (obl.), which is dialectally preserved in Modern Telugu.

Nouns in Old Telugu could be primary or derived, with primary nouns often being free forms and derived nouns formed through suffixation. Gender was signaled by specific suffixes and the overall morphology was influenced by both native Dravidian elements and Indo-Aryan borrowings.

Old Telugu verbs were categorized into finite and non-finite forms, with various suffixes indicating tense, mood, and agreement with subjects.

The language had two primary tense paradigms: past, non-past.

Past and non-past markers in Old Telugu were: -iti- (a combination of PDr past markers *-i- and *-tt-) and -VdV- (< PDr non-past *-t-) respectively. Pure past marker *-iy/*-i appeared in third person. These markers were followed by personal terminations, also varied by number.

• Epenthetic vowels, -i or -u might be attached at the finals for all the verb forms listed above.

Old Telugu causative verb forms are listed as follows:^[11]

Imperatives were formed by the addition of stems -umu (tin-umu: 'eat') in singular/non-honorific and -uṇḍu (tin-uṇḍu: 'eat') in plural/honorific usages, which became -Ø and -aṇḍi in Modern Telugu.

The pronominal system in Old Telugu marked person, number, and gender. Reflexive pronouns and a range of demonstratives, interrogatives, and indefinites were also used.

• The third person is formed by personal & gender markers on demonstratives. eg.: *awanṯu > wāṉḏu (> wāḍu) : 'that man'; *iwanṯu > wīṉḏu (> wīḍu) : 'this man'; a-di : 'that thing' etc.

The structure of Old Telugu sentences typically involved nominative-accusative alignment, with case markers indicating the grammatical roles of nouns. The language employed a variety of case forms and postpositions to express detailed semantic relations.

There are four primary colours in Old Telugu, with the root words being:

• వెళ్-/తెల్- weḷ-/teḷ- : 'white'
• కార్- kār- : 'black'
• కెమ్-/చెమ్- kem-/cem- : 'red'
• పచ్చ్-/పస్- pacc-/pas- : 'green' & 'yellow'.

Both Old Telugu and Proto-Dravidian had absence of roots which distinguish green and yellow, a feature which still exists in modern spoken Telugu.

The historical place-name suffixes of Telugu-speaking regions were as follows:

-ūr, -pūṇḍi, -pāḻu, -pēṭa, -paṭṭanambu, -wāḍa, -kal, -cheraḷa, -maraḷa, -sīma, -gūḍiyam, -guṭṭa, -paḷḷi, -pāḷiyam, -koṉḏa, -vīḍu, -valasa, -pāka, -puḻōl, -wāka, -ili, -kuṇṭa, -paṟṟu, -paṟiti, -villi, -kōna, -nāḍu, -gaḍḍa, -ēṟu, -kuduru, -baṇḍa, -peṇṭa, -varam, -purambu and -nagarambu

svasti srī erikalmuturāju dhanuñjayuṉḏu rēnāṇḍu ēḷan ciṟuṁbūri rēvaṇakālu paṁ- pu cēnūru kāj(u) aḷikaḷa ūri- ...vāru uḷi-...

svasti srī cōḻa mahārājull ēḷan erigal dugarājul iccina pannasa kocciya pāṟa rēvasarmmārikīni ḻaccina wāṉḏu pañcamahāpataka samyuktuṉḏagu...

...oḷana inpuḻōli aṇapōtulu rēvaṇakālu puddaṇakālu iccina pannasa pen pāṟa iseṟēnikin dīni ḻaccina wāṉḏu pañcamahāpatakuṉḏagun asivairuvu likitam...

paṭṭambu gaṭṭina prathamambu nēṇḍu balagarvvaṁ boppaṅga bai lēci sēna paṭṭambu gaṭṭiñci prabhu baṇḍa raṅgu bañcina samatta paḍuvatō bōya koṭṭãbulvaṇḍreṇḍu goṇi vēṅgi nāḍin goḷalci (ya) tribhuvanāṅkuśa bāṇa nilpi kaṭṭepu durggaambu gaḍu bayalsēsi kaṇḍukūr bejavāḍa gāviñcemecci...

...velayaṅga niyyeṭṭu ḻissi malinurai viḍisina vrōla gala tānapatulunu rājupaṭṭambu gaṭṭina patiyu naliyaṁ bayvūrala velvariñcina naśvamēdhambu phalambu pēkṣiñcina liṅgaṁ baḻisina pāpambu damaku...

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