HYDERABAD: Despite the ‘Classical language’ status accorded to Telugu, not much has been done to enrich the language. There is no comprehensive dictionary either for Telugu to Telugu or Telugu to English or English to Telugu.CP Brown (1798-1884), the British official of the East India Company, gave Telugus their first Telugu-English and English-Telugu dictionaries in 1852. His dictionaries are considered as standard references, even now.
Later, P Sankara Narayana, a Telugu scholar, revised both the dictionaries and added some more words. His dictionaries were first published in 1900. The same dictionaries were later revised and updated by S Narayana Aiyangar and Vedam Lakshminaraya Sastri in 1953.Telugu Akademi published an English-Telugu dictionary in 1978 and its revised edition in 1995 with 35,000 main entries and over one lakh words in different usages. The dictionary prepared on the model of Concise Oxford Dictionary failed to live up to its motto of most exhaustive and elaborate dictionary in the Telugu language.
JPL Gwynn, the last ICS officer in the erstwhile united State, compiled a Telugu-English dictionary with the help of J Venkateswara Sastry in 1991. The dictionary is now marketed by Oxford University Press. Later, Telugu Akademi published another Telugu-English dictionary. But, all these dictionaries have their own drawbacks and fail to cover vast extent of vocabulary used in the Telugu language, today.
Coming to Telugu-Telugu dictionaries, Sri Surya Rayandhra Nighantuvu was compiled and published in eight volumes way back in 1944. The ambitious lexicon was prepared under the guidance of Surya Rau Bahadur of Pithapuram Samsthanam between 1940 and 1944. It was modelled after famous Oxford English Dictionary. But, it dropped several colloquial expressions.
Noted author Bahujanapalli Seetharamacharyulu brought another Telugu-Telugu dictionary, Sabdarathnakaram, in 1912, which does not cover the vast vocabulary of the language.
Hence, a complete Telugu-Telugu, Telugu-English and English-Telugu lexicon is the need of the hour.