“why I endeavoured to bring my language near to

the real language of men” and declaring that his purpose “was to imitate and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men.” Fortunately Bengal’s popular poet is not like the tailor Namdev of Maharashtra or the tinker Bunyan of England, an unlettered working man. He is a great sanskrit scholar and knows “classical Bengali” as well as any pedant. That such a man should have deliberately chosen the living tongue of the people as the most appropriate vehicle of his thoughts in defiance of tradition and custom, must be due to a very strong conviction.

There are several others, among Bengali scholars, who likewise insist on the need of popular literature. Babu Syamacharana Ganguli strongly advocated the use of the living dialect in his most remarkable article published in the Calcutta Review (October 1877). It is said that the great peot Madhusudan introduced no obsolete grammatical forms into his nataks.

In the light of the information we have gathered regarding what is called ‘popular literature’ in English, Marathi, Hindi and Bengali, we propose to enquire in the next section whether there is any such literature in Telugu.