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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
277
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SOME OBSERVATIONS ON CAVUNDARAYA PURANA
It is now an established fact that the earliest cultivators of thc Kannada language for literary purpose were the Jainas. As carly as the beginning of the present century of the Christian era, Buhler pointed out that the foundations of literary Kannada and also of Tamil and Telugu, were laid down by the Jaina monks." The roots of this work ultimately go back to a distant past of 300 B.C., when the first colony of the Jaina monks was established at Śravanabelgola in Mysore by the Jaina Sangha that migrated from the North under Bhadrabāhu 1.Within years of this great event the Jaina monks may have commenced their preaching and teaching in Kannada and, thus, gradually enriched it and given it a literary sorm. Unfortunately, the early line of such development cannot be traced. Yet Kannada literature, found in inscriptional form, dates back from the 5th cen. A.D. And there is sufficient evidence to show that prior to the 9th cent. A.D. Kannada possessed rich and manifold literary forms, in prose, poetry and mixture of both, composed by several great literary figures like Vimala, Udaya, etc. The forms of 'cattāna’ and bedamde' which hav not come down to us, were distinct and peculiar to Kannada. The first available Kannada work, the Kavirajamārga, of Nạpatunga (814-877 A.D.), the Rāstrakuta king and disciple of Acarya Jinasena, proudly
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