ABSTRACT
Linguistic evidence divides Telugu into three historical stages. The Old Telugu period runs from the seventh century c e to about 1100; the Middle Telugu period runs from 1100 to 1600; and the Modem Telugu period runs from 1600 to the present. Our knowledge of the language before the twentieth century comes from two basic corpora: inscriptions and literary works. Beginning with the seventh century c e , Old Telugu first appears in inscriptions; and from 1100 onwards in a much larger literary corpus. The language stages in these two cor pora do not coincide in time: the inscriptional corpus is the more innovating of the two, the literary corpus is more conservative and, indeed, resolutely archais ing. Nannaya, writing in the early medieval period, uses forms attested in Old Telugu inscriptions and avoids the more innovating forms attested in contempo raneous inscriptions. With the exception of Vlrasaiva literature introducing col loquialisms into the language of medieval devotional texts, the literary language generally lagged behind the spoken language as reflected in inscriptions until the early twentieth century when the spoken form finally took precedence (see Chapter 8 on Modem Telugu). Literary forms of the early medieval period are often cited as instances of Old Telugu because they are more abundant, more cohesive and deliberately archaic.
