Appropriations and Innovations in Metalinguistic Terminology in an Influential Telugu Grammar Composed in Sanskrit

Abstract

The various traditions of Sanskrit grammar have served as models, or as sources for metalinguistic description, for many other grammars composed to describe South Asian classical or local literary languages. This article investigates the contents of the first chapter (on metalinguistic terms) of a remarkable and influential medieval grammar of the major Dravidian language Telugu, or Āndhra-bhāṣā, known as the Āndhraśabdacintāmaṇi . This grammar was composed with the same technical precision and a style similar to that of Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī . Hence, the purpose of this article: to study the processes of adaptation of metalanguage and of the Sanskrit metalinguistic technologies to describe Telugu in Sanskrit, a language that has both profound lexical affinities and striking phonological and morphological divergences from Telugu.