Proceedings of the Seminar on Prakrit Studies 1973

Author(s): K R Chandra, Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 154

18. Influence of Middle Indo-Aryan Literature on Kannada Literature
Dr. B. K. Khadabadi, Dharwar
It was a sublime virtue of the Jaina teachers and authors that wherever they migrated and settled down, they learned the regional language, cultivated it to a literary one, if it was not so then, and enriched it through their instructional and literary activities. It exactly happened so in South India and particularly in respect of Kannda. It was at the beginning of the present century that Bühler pointed out that the foundation of literary Kannada, together with that of Tamil and Telugu was laid down by Jajna monks. Later Winternitz observed the same fact at same length. The root of laying down the foundation of literary Kannada may be said to go back actually to the great migration of the Jaina Sangha headed by Bhadrabāhu and Candragupta and establishment of the first Jain Colony at Śravanabelgola. The members of such Sangha and, later, many a Jaina teacher and author were Prakritists. Hence it was natural that Prakrit or Middle IndoAryan literature influenced Kannada literature to a considerable extent. In such process the non-Jaina Middle Indo-Aryan literature also influenced Kannada literature here and there.
As things stand to this date Kannaḍa literature, found in inscriptional form, dates back from the 5th century A.D. There must have been some line of literary development connecting the earliest type of literary activity and this inscription. But unfortunately Time has hopelessly erased it. From 450 A.D., the date of this inscription, to the middle of the 9th century A.D., the date of Kavirajamärga, the earliest available Kannada work, Kannada literature is found so far in the form of inscriptions alone. At this context it is so very interesting to know that the earliest available and decipherable epigraphic records in India, including those in Karnatak are written in Prakrit alone. Hence it is just possible that the literary form of the early Prakrit inscriptions in Karnatak might have served as a model to or influenced the early Kannada inscriptions, a number of whith surely have not come down to us. A comparative and intensive study of the
1 The Indian Sect of the Jainas, English Tr. by Burgess, London 1903, p. 22
2 History of Indian Literature, Vol II, Calcutta 1933, pp. 594.595.
3 This is the inscription of Kakusthavarman at Halmiḍi of c. 450 A.D. and is the earliest datable one: Sources of Karnatak History, Vol. I, by S. Shrikantha Sha stri, Mysore University, 1940, Intro., p. XX
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