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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
28
229
INFLUENCE OF MIDDLE
INDO-ARYAN LITERATURE ON
KANNADA LITERATURE
It was a sublime virtue of the Jaina teachers and authors that wherever they migrated and settled down, they learned the regional language and cultivated it to literary activities. It exactly happened so in South India and particularly in respect of Kannada. It was at the beginning of the present century that Pof. Buhler pointed out that the foundation of literary Kannada, together with that of Tamil and Telugu, was laid down by Jaina monks. Later Winternitz observed the same fact at some length. The root of lying down the foundation of literary Kannda may be said to go back actually to the great migration of the Jain Sangha headed by Bhadrababu and Candragupta and establishment of the first Jain Colony at Sravanabelgola. The members of such Sangha and, later, many a Jaina teacher and author were Prakritists. Hence it was natural that Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan 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.
Jain Education International
As things stand to this date, Kannada literature, found in inscriptional form, dates back from the 5th century A.D.3 There must have been soon a line of literary development connecting For Private & Personal Use Only
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