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Studies in Jainology. Prakrit
237
that a very high value of Prakrit religious literature weighed on the mind of the Jaina community in Karnatak which is seen in the unparalelled careful way the great Satkhandagama works have been preserved in Kannada script and protected, till today, in the Bhandara of the Jaina Mattha in Mūdabidri.
Now considering the secular literature, the Kannada Līlavati of Nemicandra (c. 1170 A.D.) a romance, is influenced in respect of its Māyabhujanga Episode by the Karpūramañjari" Sattaka of Rajasekhara. We have already seen above that the 'Ragale' metre in Kannada literature in general is a lovely gift from Apabhramsa in which the great words like the Mahapurāna of Puspadanta were composed in the Kannada region itself.
Lastly coming to the folk-songs. it may just be said that Hala's Gahāsatlasai or Other Prakrit lyrical songs must have influenced the carly Kannada folk-songs which have come down to us from tongue to gonguc. It is, of course, very difficult to trace such influence in the Kannada folk-songs of today for some of the basic human feelings and aspiratins are more or less the same in different periods and places and “a folk-song then is always grafting the new on to the old."** Yet some of the Kannada folk-songs available today can curiously be compared with those in the Gahāsattasai : The folk-songs Māvana magale”elc, and fgeneyana Kalaakomdu' etc., collected by Dr.B.S. Gaddigimath, 4 very well compare in spirit with gaha Nos.161 and 56 respectively.35
Thus the Middle Indo-Aryan literature in Jaina Sauraseni, Ardhamagadhi, Apabhramsa, Paisacī and Mahārāsırī, has influenced, at times indirectly, the Kannada literature in varied ways and in different degrees in different periods of its history36 and made it rich and colourful. And the Jaina teachers and scholars have a prominent role in this process right from the days of its foundation.
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