Kannada literature
Kannada literature is the literary tradition associated with the Kannada language, primarily spoken in the southwestern region of India. The roots of Kannada can be traced back to at least the third century BCE, with its oldest surviving literary works dating from the ninth century CE. This rich literary tradition encompasses various forms, including religious and epic poetry, lyrical works, prose fiction, and morality tales, shaped significantly by historical influences, including those from British colonialism in the modern era.
The evolution of Kannada literature can be divided into distinct phases: Old Kannada, Middle Kannada, and Modern Kannada, each showcasing different stylistic and thematic characteristics. Early works often reflected Jain influences, while later writings were significantly shaped by the Lingayat religious movement. The modern period saw a shift towards prose fiction, with the first Kannada novel published in the early nineteenth century marking a pivotal moment in this evolution.
Contemporary Kannada literature continues to flourish, addressing themes ranging from social issues to modern reinterpretations of classical values. The emergence of a commercial publishing industry, bolstered by the introduction of the printing press, has further diversified the literary landscape, allowing for a blend of traditional and modern influences. Overall, Kannada literature stands as a vital component of India’s rich cultural tapestry, reflecting the language's historical depth and contemporary relevance.
Kannada literature
Kannada literature refers to the literary tradition of the Kannada (Kanarese) language, which is primarily spoken in southwestern India. The Kannada language dates to at least the third century BCE and its oldest surviving literary works date to the ninth century CE. Since that time, Kannada scholars and authors have shaped a continuous literary tradition that continues to thrive in the twenty-first century.
Historical works of Kannada literature generally conform to a limited number of forms, including religious and epic poetry, lyrical poetry, prose-form fiction and morality tales, and mixed-format works that include both verse and prose elements. British and European influences, introduced during India’s colonial era, have had a strong impact on modern Kannada literature. Since the twentieth century, Kannada-language literature has evolved to include shorter-form poetry, prose fiction, and drama, with modern Kanarese authors particularly emphasizing novel-length and short prose fiction formats.
Background
Kannada belongs to the Dravidian language family, which contemporary scholars estimate to include seventy to eighty languages and dialects with a combined speaker base of approximately 220 million people. Dravidian languages are mainly spoken in the Indian subcontinent and adjacent regions, though they have also established an international footprint as a result of human migration.
A 2018 review published in the Royal Society Open Science journal cited Telugu (74 million speakers) and Tamil (61 million speakers) as the largest Dravidian languages. The 2018 review estimated the number of global Kannada speakers at approximately 38 million, with the language’s speaker base heavily concentrated in the Karnataka state of southwest India. In 2011, India officially designated Kannada as one of the country’s classical languages. Kannada holds official status as an administrative language of Karnataka.
Scholars consider the Dravidian language family, and especially its larger tongues including Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada, to hold critical importance in analyzing the evolution of human civilization in South Asia. Experts note that the Dravidian language family had a strong influence on the development of many other languages, including the Indo-Aryan and Munda language families. Indo-Aryan and Munda tongues are spoken by more than 800 million people.
Though experts are uncertain of precisely when the Kannada language first emerged as a distinctive tongue, a broad consensus of linguists and historians believe it is one of the oldest Dravidian languages. The 2018 Royal Society Open Science review dated the origins of the Dravidian language family to approximately 4,500 years ago. Academics use various models to describe the evolution of the Kannada language, with the simplest dividing its history into old (ca. 450 BCE–ca. 1200 CE), middle (ca. 1200–ca. 1700), and modern (ca. 1700–present) phases. Contemporary Kannada dialects reflect both geographic and social class (caste) classifications, which are broadly divisible into southern, northern, and coastal variations. Strong diglossia distinctions have also traditionally defined the Kannada language, creating stark historical differences between its colloquial and literary forms.
Overview
The oldest elements of the Kanarese literary tradition display strong Jain influences. Jainism is an ancient religion believed to have originated in the Indian subcontinent around 500 BCE. It is defined by beliefs in reincarnation and a spiritual cause-and-effect system known as karma. Jainism also espouses nonviolence as a core principle, with observant Jainists going to great lengths to avoid harming other living things, including both animals and plants, to the greatest possible degree.
Around the turn of the thirteenth century, Jainism’s presence in Kannada-language literature waned as Lingayatism exerted an increasingly strong influence over Kanarese literary culture. Lingayat, also known as Virashaiva, is a Hindu denomination that commentators often describe as originally being a reformist movement. Classical (pre-modern) Kannada literature can be broadly divided into two stages, with the first defined by its Jainist influences and the second reflecting the ascendancy of Lingayatism as a principal guiding force.
Old and Middle Kannada Literature
Beyond inscribed records, virtually no Kannada-language writing dating to the early centuries of the Old Kannada period has survived. Thus, historians usually trace the beginnings of the Kanarese literary tradition to the Kavirajamarga, a poetry compilation created across a period spanning 814–877 CE. The Kavirajamarga is the oldest surviving Kannada-language work. It includes a collection of 541 poems divided into three chapters, with much of its content focusing on the stylistic and rhetorical elements of Kannada poetics, and themes related to truth, ethics, and the value of religious belief. Kavirajamargatranslates to English as “the royal path for poets,” and the work is generally credited to King Amoghavarsha I (ca. 800–878), who commissioned it and is believed to have composed some of its constituent poems.
The Bharata, a mid-tenth-century work credited to the Indian poet Pampa (902–955) represents another significant work of classical Kannada literature. It, along with Pampa’s Ramayana, is a Jainist Kanarese adaptation of epic poems originally belonging to Hindu literary traditions. The Ramayana, along with the Mahabharata, is considered one of the two great epic poems of classical Indian literature. They hold cultural and historical standing roughly analogous to the great Homeric epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey from the Western literary canon.
As Lingayatism supplanted Jainism as a primary religious influence, Kannada literature underwent a significant stylistic shift. Works began exhibiting an economical and unadorned style, with lyrical poetry emerging as a favored format. Prose and mixed-form works also began to appear in the Kanarese literary tradition following the Lingayat shift, with representative examples including the Vacanakāvyas and the Lilavati. The Vacanakāvyas consist of metrical verse-form prose, a style known as champu or champu-kavya, written in praise of Siva, one of the principal deities in the Hindu pantheon. It dates to the late fourteenth century. The Līlāvatī, written around 1350, is believed to be the oldest surviving novel in the Kanarese language.
One of the most recent canonical works of Middle Kannada literature is the Rajashekara Vilasa, a fable dating to the mid-seventeenth century. The story focuses on a ruling family threatened by unexpected hardship after issuing rulings intended to stop lawlessness, requiring the direct intervention of Siva to prevent tragic consequences.
Modern and Contemporary Kannada Literature
Commentators generally trace the modern period of Kannada literature to about the turn of the nineteenth century. During the reign of Krishnaraja Wadiyar III (1794–1868), the influential poets of the Kanarese royal court made a deliberate break from the champu metric prose-form verse styles of classical Kannada literature and began to focus on creating adaptations of classical Sanskrit epic poems and dramas. In 1823, the first modern Kannada-language novel, Mudramanjusha (“Seal Casket”) by Kempu Narayana was published, marking a watershed moment in the evolving Kanarese literary tradition.
With European and British colonial activity in the Indian subcontinent and adjacent regions exerting increasing levels of cultural influence, modern Kannada literature also expanded to include translations of English-language works. A growing number of Bengali-to-Kannada and Marathi-to-Kannada translations also began to appear in the Kanarese literary corpus, introducing authors to an expanded set of external influences.
Also in the nineteenth century, Kanarese authors began deliberately breaking down the traditional barriers between the colloquial and literary forms of the Kannada language. This had the general effect of broadening Kannada literature’s appeal to mass audiences, resulting in the development of a commercial publishing industry that continues to thrive in the twenty-first century. The arrival of the printing press in southwestern India, which also occurred during the nineteenth century, was another major influence on the commercial and popular development of Kanarese literature.
During its modern and contemporary periods, Kanarese literature has generally favored prose-form fiction with a strong emphasis on novels and short stories. Such works have been arranged into a diverse spectrum of genres and subgenres that generally reflect those found in Western popular culture, given the profound and ongoing impact of English-language literature on India’s literary milieu.
However, uniquely Kanarese genres have also developed, with some emerging during the first half of the twentieth century. These include the integration of traditional forms of lyric and religious poetry and folk music, with strong influences from English Romanticism. Poetry and drama have also continued to thrive in modern Kannada literature, with contemporary literary themes focusing on subjects including modern reinterpretations of classical values, the legacy of British colonialism, and the social impacts of the Indian caste system.
In the twenty-first century, some regard Belluru Mylaraiah Srikantaiah (1884-1946) as the father of modern Kannada literature. His works of poetry, novels, plays, and literary criticism inspired modern Kannada works, such as Yashwant Vithoba Chittal's Shikari: The Hunt (1979), D. V. Gundappa's "Mankuthimmana Kagga" (1943), and Parva (1979) by S. L. Bhyrappa.
Bibliography
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