A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s3.1

c19.s3.1

Among South Indian languages, after Tamil, Kannada possesses the oldest literature. Its beginnings are not clearly traceable, but a considerable volume of prose and poetry must have come into existence before the date of Nripatuṅga’s Kavirājamārga (850), the earliest extant work on rhetoric in Kannada. In that work the Kannada country is said to have extended from the Kaveri to the Godāvari, and thus included much territory in the north where now Marathi is the spoken language. The district round about Puligere was held to be the well of pure Kannada undefiled. Durvinīta, mentioned in the same book as one of the best writers of Kannada prose, might well have been the Gaṅga monarch of the sixth century. Another early writer was the celebrated Śrīvardhadeva, also called Tumubulūrācārya from the place of his birth; his Cūḍāmaṇi, a commentary on the Tattvārtha-mahāśāstra, in 96,000 verses, was known to the great Kannada grammarian Bhaṭṭākalaṅka (1604) who calls it the greatest work in the language. Another writer of this early period (c. 650) was Śyāmakundācārya. Both these ācāryas, like most early Kannada writers, were Jains.