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MILE STONES IN TELUGU LITERATURE.
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Asylum, in which one brother might be employed in reading Yaska's Nirukta and another in meditating the Brihadaranya ko panishad, in which he who bad a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. What the Olympian chariot-course and the Delphio oracle were to all the Greek cities from Trebizond to Marseilles, what Rome and her Bishop were to all the Christians of the Latin communion from the Calabria to the Hebrides, the simple religion of the Vedic Brahmans was to all the Hindus from Peshawar to Malabar. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even in war the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished foes were all members of one great federation.
The sham cosmopolitans of the type above referred to do not, however, profess to derive their views from the Vedas, and only occasionally do they quote the antideluvian nebulosity of a ślóka of the Gità or of the Védánta Sútras. They are, in fact, reformers and have a literature of their own. No portion of this literature can claim to be of any great antiquity. A major portion of it cannot certainly be more than three centuries old. The reason for this is not far to seek, as these popular poems are usually mere mushroom existences, which pass away with the death of their author. There is not that spirit in them which can make them double-lived in regions new. It is only very rarely that a genuine popular poet arises, who can claim a place with the classical writers. In the Deccan we meet with such a man in the person of Vemana, who was to the Telugus what Burns was to Ayrshire. Both of them are honored and respected in the same manner to the present day.
Mr. Campbell (in the Madras Christian College Magazine, Vol. XV. p. 524) says, One would naturally wish to have some definite information about a man who has exerted such an influence upon the religious life of his countrymen, but unfortunately it is by no means easy to gratify this wish.' History is an unknown art in India, and it is extremely difficult to discover a basis of reliable fact beneath the mass of legends which are associated with the name of the poet. It is generally believed that he lived about 250 years ago. Several places claim the honor of his birth, but it is impossible, I think, to come to any more definite conclusion than that he was born somewhere in the wild hilly country situated 200 miles to the north-west of Muras and inclulel within the limits of the Ouddapah district. Cuddapah and Kurnul, which lies a little to the north, were undoubtedly the scene of his life's work. Local tralition says that his home was in Katarapalli, a small village in the extreme south-west of the Cuddapah district, and it is Pertain that a family is to be found there, whose members claim to be his lineal descendants and receive offerings from those who wish to do honor to the poet. Vemana belonged to the Kapu or farmer caste. This is, in the Telugu country, by far the most important of the numerous castes included under the term Sadra. The Kapus are naturally a free outspoken race, with very little of that cringing to authority, which is so characteristic of the majority of their fellow-countrymen. Representatives of the old Dravidian civilization, they still retain many of the simpler and freer customs which were followed by their ancestors before the Aryan invasion introdnced the caste and sacerdotal systems. Vêmana was a typical Kapu, and never tried to conceal the fact. He made no pretension either to scholastic attainments or to priestly power, but, like the sturly herdsman of Tekoa, professed to be a mere plain unlettered farmer.
In India especially, custom is a power fixed by a thousand tough and stringy roots to people's pious nursery faith, and what is grey with age becomes religion. It is easy, therefore, for one acquainted with the environments of a farmer's household to form a fair picture of Vomana and his ordinary avocations. Katarapalli, which was probably his home, is a village in the gneiss country of South-east Cuddapah, where the land begins to slope up towards the great Mysore plateau. It is situated near a range of rocky hills, rough with huge boulders and strange pillar-like peaks, and devoid of vegetation, except where a few great cacti have won a place for
