Telugu Resurgence: C. P. Brown and Cultural Consolidation in Nineteenth-Century South India.

• Author: Rocher, Rosane
• Position: Book Review

Telugu Resurgence: C. P. Brown and Cultural Consolidation in Nineteenth-Century South India. By PETER L. SCHMITTHENNER. New Delhi: MANOHAR, 2001. Pp. 311, maps, tables. Rs. 600.

In this revised version of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Wisconsin in 1991, historian Peter L. Schmitthenner offers a biography of a pioneer scholar of Telugu grammatology, lexicography, language pedagogy, and literature. Charles Philip Brown (1798-1884) provides an interesting example of a civil servant who made major contributions not only to knowledge, but also to the blossoming of a South Indian language and culture. Born in Calcutta, a son of the Anglican Chaplain to the Presidency and Provost of the College of Fort William, he was educated in England from his early teens, following the death of his father, and received, along with his elder brother, training at the East India Company College in Hayleybury. His public service in Madras Presidency was a notable failure, and subjected him to repeated official reprimands and public criticism. His scholarly work, for which he received scant government support, was all too clearly his primary, if not only concern. A quirky, opinionated, and abrasive man who remained a lifelong bachelor, he was a harsh critic of prior and fellow scholars, of the Indian assistants in his pay, and of the language instructors at the College of Fort St. George.

Schmitthenner painstakingly traces Brown's career from a variety of archival and other sources in India and in Britain, where Brown ended his career as Professor of Telugu at University College in London. In so doing, he also sneds light on the milieu in which Brown worked and to the evolution of which he contributed. See, for example, an interesting account of the origin and early development of the collection of manuscripts that eventually became the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Madras (pp. 164-74).

The primary weakness of the volume lies in Schmitthenner's reluctance or inability to give a linguistic analysis of Brown's work. This leads to vague...