ABSTRACT
This chapter titled “Harm Done to Telugu” is an essay from Thapi Dharmarao’s collection of essays Kottapaali (1955). It echoes his view that the ancient Telugu literature is the Sanskrit literature in Telugu script and his strong belief that Telugu literature has lost its basic qualities due to its borrowings from the Sanskrit literary tradition. It corroborates with his argument that excessive influence of Sanskrit literature has in a sense curtailed the scope and expression of Telugu writers. They already have a framework that is validated, and they have to write to fit into that framework. Such an argument can be seen in many other critics who have examined Telugu literature from a comparative perspective and examined the influence of Sanskrit and English literatures on Telugu. In this essay, Thapi Dharmarao goes a little ahead and borrows examples from other South Indian languages in order to understand the patterns of sound and meaning in poetry. He uses the word bhashantareekarinchuta for translation. He plays on the words antakarana and antareekarana. Antakarana is subjective and antareekarana is transferring. He means to say that a translation can be transferring a text from one language to another, and it can be highly subjective. By using these words, he erases the difference between the two and emphasises the role played by the subjectivity of the writer despite the tremendous influence of Sanskrit literature on Telugu literature.
