A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s3.6

c19.s3.6

The next great writer was Nāgacandra (c. 1105) a Jain and a man of means who built the Mallinātha Jinālaya dedicated to the nineteenth Tīrthankara at Bijapur and also wrote the *Mallinātha-purāṇa*, a Campū. But Nāgacandra is best known for his *Rāmacandra-caritapurāṇa* which gives the Jaina version of the Rāma legend in a Campū of sixteen sections, the story proper beginning only with the third. The poem was a necessary complement to the *Bhārata* of Pampa, and earned for its author the title Abhinava (new) Pampa. The story differs in many ways from Vālmīki's; Rāma gets the *Jinadīkṣā*, becomes a Jaina ascetic and attains *Nirvāṇa* at the end. To the first quarter of the twelfth century belong also a Jaina polemic *Samayaparīkṣe* of Brahmaśiva which seeks to establish the superiority of Jainism over all other creeds, and the *Gōvaidya* of Kīrttivarma, a work on veterinary science, half-medicine and half-magic. Round about 1145, Karṇapārya wrote the life of the twenty-second *Tīrthankara* in his *Nēminātha-purāṇa*, a Campū in fourteen *āśvāsas* in which the story of Krishna and the *Mahābhārata* are also cleverly worked in. To the same time belongs Nāgavarma II, the author of *Kāvyāvalōkana*, an important work on the grammar and rhetoric of Kannada in five sections; it takes the form of Sūtras in verse illustrated by examples from literature. Another work of Nāgavarma on grammar is the *Karṇāṭakabhāṣābhūṣaṇa*; here the Sūtras and a short explanation are both in Sanskrit, while the illustrations come from Kannada literature. The *Vāstukōśa*, a third work of Nāgavarma II, is a relatively short lexicon of 800 *granthas*, giving Kannada equivalents of Sanskrit terms. Nāgavarma was *Kaṭakopādhyāya* (camp-teacher) under Jagadekamalla II, whom he survived for many years, becoming the teacher of poet Janna (c. 1209). *Udayādityālaṅkāra* (c. 1150) is a short work on the art of poetry based on Dandin's *Kāvyādarśa* by a Chola prince whose name it bears. A work on medicine, Pūjyapāda's *Kalyāṇakāraka*, was translated from Sanskrit into Kannada at this time by a Jaina author Jagaddala Sōmanātha; 'the treatment it prescribes is entirely vegetarian and non-alcoholic.' Rājāditya (1190), a Jain of Pūvinabāge, showed great skill in reducing to easy verse the mathematical subjects he dealt with in several *gaṇita* works like *Vyavahāra-gaṇita*, *Kṣetra-gaṇita* and *Līlāvati*.