Book Review

Asia

This study of Charles Philip Brown (1798–1884) constitutes a welcome addition to the growing literature on South Indian colonial history and cultural identity formation. Little known in Euro-American academic circles but celebrated among the Telugu speakers whose language and literatures he studied, Brown played a pivotal role in the creation of a uniquely Telugu identity that culminated in the formation of the state of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. Peter L. Schmitthenner argues that Brown's focus on non-elite forms of Telugu expression in particular contributed to a new sense of Telugu identity, demonstrating the many ways in which "Orientalism" was "a collaborative effort between Europeans and Indians" (p. 33).

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Using a wide range of sources in English and Telugu, Schmitthenner traces Brown's life from early childhood through long government service in southern India and eventual retirement to England. Schmitthenner focuses throughout on Brown's work in Telugu, from his pioneering efforts to preserve historical and literary manuscripts and support the composition of indigenous Christian works to the compilation of his many dictionaries and grammars. What emerges is a portrait of a complex and difficult man whose lackluster official performance and maverick intellectual pursuits often set Brown at odds with his administrative superiors, fellow Indologists, and Telugu-speaking assistants. Indeed, Brown's role in the formation of modern Telugu cultural identity would become clear only after his death. In the early twentieth century, advocates of the "Modem Telugu Movement" turned to Brown's publications for examples of colloquial composition accessible to a wider Telugu-speaking audience (pp. 221–22). Telugu modernists and traditionalists alike looked to Brown's formidable collection of historical manuscripts housed in Madras, in the decades after his death, to construct and preserve their cultural heritage (p. 173). Schmitthenner concludes that Brown "became a symbol of both the traditional and modern elements which made up" modern Telugu identity (p. 282).

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