AMARAVATI: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday paid tribute to Charles Philip Brown, the preserver of Telugu literature, on his 228th birth anniversary. "Brown's selfless service to the development of Telugu is our true inspiration," Naidu said, praising him for devoting his life and wealth to the language despite being a foreigner. He called for teaching Telugu in schools, giving it priority in administration and digitising endangered old texts.
YSRCP president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, in a post on X, described Brown as a great man who dedicated his life to spreading the Telugu language.
Brown's work
- Born in Calcutta on November 10, 1798; died on December 12, 1884
- Posted to Cuddapah (Kadapa) in August 1820; moved to Machilipatnam as assistant judge in 1822
- Translated 693 of Vemana's verses into English, published in 1829
- His Telugu–English and English–Telugu dictionaries appeared between 1852 and 1854
- Collected palm-leaf manuscripts at his own cost and had scholars prepare them for print
The C.P. Brown Memorial Library now stands on the site of his Kadapa bungalow. Built with the efforts of Janamaddi Hanumath Sastri, it was taken over by Yogi Vemana University and upgraded into a research centre for languages.
