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124 ANDHRA, KARNATA JAINISM. work which like Ketana’s Anthrabhāsha Bhusanam forms« the earliest grammatical contribution of Telugu language, the author bemoans the disrespect‘of .certain Sanskritists of the day to Telugu works and incidentally mentions Yati and Prasa. which Telugu verses possess as improvements over the Sanskrit system of prosody. .
The verse kears quotation :M. II. Vilasadbhāva rasādyalamkrtulace
vippāru girvanabha shala kabbambulakanna mamci
tanamul samdhinchu camdambunai Valiyum brasamulamtak aggala
mulai vartillu Satkavyamul. Telugeman jevi betta lemiyudupan
degalgune mamd ilan Thus at that early date vali and prasa must have become fixed even in purely Sanskrit metres as Sardulam and Mattēbham, the type to which the verse just quoted belongs. Eut the Sardulam with jna as the second syllable in three out of four Padams, from the epigraphic excerpts quoted above, which was the composition of the Poet Chettanabhatta, a contemporary of Nannaya, serves to show how tke prasa system has been creeping into South Indian Sanskrit versification. The jna allitera
tion in the verse is a fairly good type of the "' South Indian method of alliteration discussed in
Kittel's Introducton .to Nagavarma's prosody
