Jain Journal 2003 07

SR No.: 520151
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 2003
Total Pages: 64
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 4 MB

Page 30

HAMPA NAGARAJAIH: EPIGRAPHIA JAINIKA
6th to 12th century, an evolution of the Kannada language is traced methodically. The shift and stages of Pre-Old-Kannada to OldKannada and Old-Kannada to Middle-Kannada are richly illustrated. The Campū sytle, rooted deeper and the happy choice of elite literati, served as a model of dignity in composing inscriptional poetry. Not only in drafting royal records, but also in delineating the pontiffical genealogies (chronicler of successive teacher pupil pedigree), highflown and refined language of literary poetic style was felicitously employed. Inscriptional literature reached its zenith at Sravanabelagola. The 11th and 12th century compositions in particular, including the nisidikals, exhibit ornateness and grandeur of successful poetry at its best. The vigorous verses used and their metrical composition amply testify to the existence of a literary tradition though no literature of this early period is surviving to this day. Even the prose passages arranged in poetic diction, is a positive evidence of Kannada poetry. The period marks the flowering of the excellence of Kannada poetry. The epigraphs here had developed a proto-literary style and format of its own in drafting Jaina inscriptions which, very often, gets repeated. As mentioned before, details found recorded in these inscriptions are of immense value for history, religion, politics, culture, art, architecture, linguistics, poetics, economics, sociology, philosophy, grammar, prosody and literature.
The language and orthography of early inscriptions, of this cient place of pilgrimage, shows some interesting and significant features not commonly met with, of the period, elsewhere. The literary feature of charters assigned to 6th to 9th centuries is that they furnish more archaic and desi vocabulary compared to the later records written with a mixture of less Kannada words and more Sanskrit words. In brief, the inscriptions at Sravanabelagola afford an evolution of the Kannada language and orthography.
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