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CRITICAL TIMES
263 vinces mentioned above. The Jaina teachers as the intellectual custodians of the Andhradeśa, the Tamil land, and Karnātaka most assiduously cultivated the vernaculars of the people, and wrote in them great works of abiding value to the country. Purism was the keynote of their compositions, although almost all the early Jaina writers were profound Sanskrit scholars. With them originated some of the most renowned classics in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. It has been rightly opined that the Jainas gave to the Tamil people their didactic classics like the Kural and Náladiyār ; major kāvyas like Silappadikāram, Manimekhalai, and Cintāmaņi, minor kävyas like Nilakesi, Perunkathai (or Brhadkathā) Nāgakumārakāvya, Cüļāmani, and quite a number of other works as well.1
To the Andhradeśa and Karnāšaka, among other precious gifts, the Jainas gave the campū kāvyas or poems in a variety of composite metres interspersed with paragraphs in prose. When Nannaya, the author of the famous Telugu Mahābhārata, to stem the tide of the naturalized Kannadiga Pampa's Bhārata, which had won great celebrity in the Vengimaņqala, prepared a Telugu Brahman counterpart of the same story, he adopted the campū style which was the gift of the Jainas to Karnāšaka.2 An example of a Jaina scholar in the capital of the Telugu king in the first quarter of the fourteenth century A.D. is that of Ayyapārya, the author of the Sanskrit work called Jainendra-kalyāņābhyudaya. He wrote his work in A.D. 1319 at Ekaśīlanagara (Warangal) in the reign of king Rudradeva. He was the disciple of Dharasenācārya, and was of the Kāśyapa gotra
1. Read Ramaswami, Studies, pp. 76-77, 81-104 ; Rice, My. & Coorg, p. 198.
2. Seshagiri Rao, op. cit., pp. 100-103
