Charles Philip Brown Bicentennial Birth Anniversary

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

                        CHARLES PHILIP BROWN

The Bicentennial birth anniversary of C.P.Brown is being celebrated
on the 14th & 15th of this month at Cuddapah the place where C.P.Brown
resided for a long time and did yeoman service for telugu literature.

Born on 10 November 1798 in Calcutta, Charles Philip Brown acquired
proficiency in Telugu, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. He was
appointed to serve as Assistant Collector in Cuddapah in 1820. On the
exhortation of  Sir Thomas Munroe, the then Governer of Madras Presidency,
to learn the regional languages and carry out administration in them ,
he gathered round him a number of telugu scholars  and not only learnt
the language but got a number of telugu classics collated from manuscripts
and published some of them. And he did all these things paying people out
of his pocket. But for him a number telugu classics would have gone into
oblivion. The dictionaries of English - Telugu and Telugu - English which
he authored are still standard and are known as "brauNyaM". His appointment
in various places in telugu region in various capacities as a civil servent
helped his literary activities.

The place where he lived in Cuddapah and did most of his telugu literary
work has been acquired and a memorial library has been established in
his name in a nice building which boasts of 18,500 + volumes which is
recognised as a research center by the telugu university.

regards,

sarma.