Everything about Kannada Language totally explained
Kannada is one of the major
Dravidian languages of
India, spoken predominantly in the southern state of
Karnataka. It is the 27th most spoken language in the world, with native speakers called
Kannadigas numbering roughly around 35 million.
Kannada forms the
Tamil-Kannada subgroup of the
Southern Dravidian languages, separated from
Tulu. It is most closely related to the
Badaga language.
The Kannada language is written using the
Kannada script. The other native languages of Karnataka,
Tulu,
Kodava Takk and
Konkani are also written using the Kannada script.
Kannada is attested epigraphically from the mid-1st millennium CE, and literary
Old Kannada flourishes in the 9th to 10th century
Rashtrakuta Dynasty.
Contemporary
Kannada literature is the most successful in India, with India's highest literary honor, the
Jnanpith awards, having been conferred seven times upon Kannada writers, which is the highest for any language in India.
History
The initial development of the Kannada language is similar to that of other Dravidian languages and independent of Sanskrit. During later centuries, Kannada, along with other Dravidian languages like
Telugu,
Tamil,
Malayalam, etc., has been greatly influenced by
Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles.
Early epigraphy
Pre-old Kannada (
Purava HaleGannada or) was the language of
Banavasi in the early Common Era, the
Satavahana and
Kadamba periods and hence has a history of over 2000 years. The
Ashoka rock edict found at
Brahmagiri (dated to 230 BC) has been suggested to contain a word in identifiable Kannada.
Written tradition of Kannada begins in the 5th to 6th century CE. The earliest examples of a full-length Kannada language stone inscription (
shilashaasana) containing Brahmi characters with characteristics resembling those of
Tamil in
Hale Kannada (
Old Kannada) script can be found in the
Halmidi inscription, dated 450 CE, indicating that Kannada had become an administrative language by this time. The 5th century Tamatekallu inscription of
Chitradurga and the Chikkamagaluru inscription of 500 CE are further examples.
Over 30,000 inscriptions written in the Kannada language have been discovered so far.Prior to the Halmidi inscription, there's an abundance of inscriptions containing Kannada words, phrases and sentences, proving its antiquity. The 543 CE Badami cliff inscription of
Pulakesi I is an example of a Sanskrit inscription in
Hale Kannada script.
The earliest full-length Kannada copper plates in
Old Kannada script (early eighth century CE) belongs to the
Alupa King Aluvarasa II from Belmannu, South Kanara district and displays the double crested fish, his royal emblem. The oldest well-preserved palm leaf manuscript is in
Old Kannada and is that of
Dhavala, dated to around the ninth century, preserved in the Jain Bhandar, Mudbidri,
Dakshina Kannada district. The manuscript contains 1478 leaves written using ink.
Old Kannada (9th - 14th c.)
Kannada literature begins to flourish under the
Rashtrakuta Dynasty (9th to 10th century).
The written Kannada language has come under various religious and social influences in its 1600 years of known existence. Linguists generally divide the written form into four broad phases.
From the ninth to fourteenth centuries CE, Kannada works were classified under
Old Kannada (
Halegannada). In this period Kannada showed a high level of maturity as a language of original literature. Mostly
Jain and
Saivite poets produced works in this period. This period saw the growth of Jain
puranas and
Virashaiva Vachana Sahitya or simply
vachana, a unique and native form of literature which was the summary of contributions from all sections of society. Early Brahminical works also emerged from the eleventh century. By the tenth century Kannada had seen its greatest poets, such as
Pampa,
Sri Ponna and
Ranna, and its great prose writings such as the
Vaddaradhane of
Shivakotiacharya, indicating that a considerable volume of classical prose and poetry in Kannada had come into existence a few centuries before
Kavirajamarga (c.850). Among existing landmarks in
Kannada grammar,
Nagavarma II's
Karnataka-bhashabhushana (1145) and
Kesiraja's
Shabdamanidarpana (1260) are the oldest.
Middle Kannada (14th to 18th c.)
In the period between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries CE,
Brahmanical
Hinduism had a great influence on Middle Kannada (
Nadugannada) language and literature. Non-brahmin Hindu saints like
Kanakadasa and
Brahminical saints of the
Vaishnava sect such as
Purandaradasa,
Naraharitirtha,
Vyasatirtha,
Sripadaraya,
Vadirajatirtha,
Vijaya Dasa, Jagannathadasa, etc., produced devotional poems in this period. Kanakadasa's
Ramadhanya Charite is a rare work, concerning itself with the issue of class struggle. This period saw the advent of
Haridasa Sahitya which made rich contributions to
bhakti literature and sowed the seeds of Carnatic music.
Modern Kannada (1800 to present)
The Kannada works produced by the end of the nineteenth century and later are classified as
Hosagannada or Modern Kannada. However, till the beginning of the twentieth century there were Kannada literary works that could still be classified under the heading of Middle Kannada. Most notable among them are the poet Muddana's works. His works may be described as the "Dawn of Modern Kannada". Generally, linguists treat
Indira Bai or
Saddharma Vijayavu by Gulvadi Venkata Raya as the first literary works in Modern Kannada.
Coins
Some early
Kadamba Dynasty coins bearing the Kannada inscription
Vira and
Skandha were found in Satara collectorate. A gold coin bearing three inscriptions of
Sri and an abbreviated inscription of king Bhagiratha's name called
bhagi (390-420 CE) in old Kannada exists. A Kadamba copper coin dated to the fifth century CE with the inscription
Srimanaragi in Kannada script was discovered in Banavasi,
Uttara Kannada district. Coins with Kannada legends have been discovered spanning the rule of the
Western Ganga Dynasty, the Badami
Chalukyas, the
Alupas, the
Western Chalukyas, the
Rashtrakutas, the
Hoysalas, the
Vijayanagar Empire, the
Kadamba Dynasty of Banavasi, the
Keladi Nayakas and the
Mysore Kingdom, the Badami Chalukya coins being a recent discovery. The coins of the Kadambas of Goa are unique in that they've alternate inscription of the king's name in Kannada and Devanagari in triplicate, a few coins of the Kadambas of
Hangal are also available.
Literature and poetry
tripadi metre is the
Kappe Arabhatta record of 700 CE.
Kavirajamarga by King Nripatunga
Amoghavarsha I (850 CE) is the earliest existing literary work in Kannada. It is a writing on literary criticism and poetics meant to standardize various written Kannada dialects used in literature in previous centuries. The book makes reference to Kannada works by early writers such as King
Durvinita of the sixth century and Ravikirti, the author of the Aihole record of 636 CE. Since the earliest available Kannada work is one on grammar and a guide of sorts to unify existing variants of
Kannada grammar (ವ್ಯಾಕರಣ) and literary styles, it can be safely assumed that literature in Kannada must have started several centuries earlier. An early
extant prose work, the
Vaddaradhane by Shivakotiacharya of 900 CE provides an elaborate description of the life of Bhadrabahu of
Shravanabelagola.
Kannada works from earlier centuries mentioned in the
Kavirajamarga are not yet traced. Some ancient texts now considered extinct but referenced in later centuries are
Prabhrita (650 CE) by Syamakundacharya,
Chudamani (Crest Jewel-650 CE) by Srivaradhadeva, also known as Tumbuluracharya, which is a work of 96,000 verse-measures and a commentary on logic (
Tatwartha-mahashastra). Other sources date
Chudamani to the sixth century or earlier. The
Karnateshwara Katha, a eulogy for King
Pulakesi II, is said to have belonged to the seventh century; the
Gajastaka, a work on elephant management by King
Shivamara II, belonged to the eighth century, and the
Chandraprabha-purana by Sri Vijaya, a court poet of King
Amoghavarsha I, is ascribed to the early ninth century. Tamil Buddhist commentators of the tenth century CE (in the commentary on
Nemrinatham, a Tamil grammatical work) make references that show that Kannada literature must have flourished as early as the fourth century CE.
The Middle Kannada period gave birth to several genres of Kannada literature, with new forms of composition coming into use, including
Ragale (a form of blank verse) and meters like
Sangatya and
Shatpadi. The works of this period are based on
Jain and
Hindu principles. Two of the early writers of this period are
Harihara and Raghavanka, trailblazers in their own right. Harihara established the
Ragale form of composition while
Raghavanka popularized the
Shatpadi(six-lined stanza) meter. A famous
Jaina writer of the same period is
Janna, who expressed Jain religious teachings through his works.
The
Vachana Sahitya tradition of the twelfth century is purely native and unique in world literature,
Kumara Vyasa, who wrote the
Karnata Bharata Kathamanjari, has arguably been the most famous and most influential Kannada writer of the fifteenth century. His work, entirely composed in the
Bhamini Shatpadi meter, is a sublime adaptation of the first ten chapters of the
Mahabharata. The
Bhakti movement gave rise to
Dasa Sahitya around the fifteenth century which significantly contributed to the evolution of
Carnatic music in its present form. This period witnessed great
Haridasas like
Purandara Dasa who has been aptly called the
Pioneer of Carnatic music,
Kanaka Dasa,
Vyasathirtha and
Vijaya Dasa.
Modern Kannada in the twentieth century has been influenced by many movements, notably
Navodaya,
Navya,
Navyottara,
Dalita and
Bandaya. Contemporary Kannada literature has been highly successful in reaching people of all classes in society. Works of Kannada literature have received seven
Jnanpith awards, which is the highest number awarded for the literature in any Indian language. It has also received forty-seven
Sahitya Academy awards.
Dialects
There is also some distinction between the spoken and written forms of the language. Spoken Kannada tends to vary from region to region. The written form is more or less constant throughout Karnataka, however. The
Ethnologue reports "about 20 dialects" of Kannada. Among them are
Kundagannada (spoken exclusively in
Kundapura), Nadavar-Kannada (spoken by
Nadavaru),
Havyaka (spoken mainly by Havyaka Brahmins),
Are Bhashe (spoken mainly in the
Sullia region of
Dakshina Kannada),
Soliga,
Badaga, Gulbarga Kannada, Dharawad Kannada, Chitradurga Kannada, and others. All of these dialects are influenced by their regional and cultural background.
Ethnologue also classifies a group of "Kannada languages" comprising four members, besides Kannada proper including
Badaga,
Holiya and
Urali.
Geographic distribution
Kannada is mainly spoken in
Karnataka in
India, and to a good extent in the neighbouring states of
Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu,
Kerala and
Goa, as well as in sizeable communities in the
USA, the
UK, and
Singapore.
Official status
Kannada is one of the twenty-two
official languages of India and is the sole administrative language of the State of Karnataka.
Writing system
phonemic letters, divided into three groups: Swaragalu (thirteen letters); Yogavaahakagalu (two letters, ಅಂ and ಅಃ); and Vyanjanagalu (thirty-four letters), similar to the vowels and consonants of
English, respectively. The character set is almost identical to that of other
Indian languages. The script itself, derived from
brahmi script, is fairly complicated like most other languages of India owing to the occurrence of various combinations of "half-letters" (
glyphs), or symbols that attach to various letters in a manner similar to
diacritical marks in the
Romance languages. The Kannada script is almost perfectly phonetic, but for the sound of a "half n" (which becomes a half m). The number of written symbols, however, is far more than the forty-nine characters in the alphabet, because different characters can be combined to form
compound characters
(vattaksharas). Each written symbol in the Kannada script corresponds with one
syllable, as opposed to one
phoneme in languages like English. The script of Kannada is also used in other languages such as
Tulu,
Kodava Takk and
Konkani. Simply put, the Kannada script is syllabic.
Extinct Kannada letters
Kannada literary works employed letters ಱ (transliterated 'ṟ' or 'rh') and ೞ (transliterated 'ḻ', 'lh' or 'zh'), whose manner of articulation most plausibly could be akin to those in present-day
Malayalam and
Tamil. The letters dropped out of use in the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, respectively. Later Kannada works replaced 'rh' and 'lh' with ರ (ra) and ಳ (la) respectively.
Another letter (or unclassified
vyanjana (consonant)) that has become extinct is 'nh' or 'inn'. (Likewise, this has its equivalent in Malayalam and Tamil.) The usage of this consonant was observed until the 1980s in Kannada works from the mostly coastal areas of Karnataka (especially the
Dakshina Kannada district). Now hardly any mainstream works use this consonant. This letter has been replaced by ನ್ (consonant n).
Kannada script in computing
Transliteration
Several transliteration schemes/tools are used to type Kannada characters using a standard keyboard. These include
Baraha (based on
ITRANS) and Quillpad (predictive transliterator).
Nudi, the government of Karnataka's standard for Kannada Input, is a phonetic layout loosely based on transliteration.
Unicode
Grammar
Kannada is a highly
inflected language with three
genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral or common) and two numbers (singular and plural). It is inflected for gender, number and tense, among other things.
Dictionary
A German priest, the Reverend
Ferdinand Kittel, composed the first Kannada-English dictionary, consisting of more than 70,000 words.
Ferdinand Kittel has also written a book on Kannada grammar called "A Grammar of the Kannada Language: Comprising the Three Dialects of the Language".
Further Information
Get more info on 'Kannada Language'.
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