ABSTRACT
Kannada (formerly known also as Kanarese) is the official language of the State of Karnataka in southern India. The number of speakers is probably at least 35 million. As regards number of speakers, Kannada comes in third place among the Dravidian languages after Telugu and Tamil; as regards age and quality of literary tradition, it runs Tamil a close second. The most important work in the early period is the Kavirajamarga, a rhetorical Sanskritized treatise, enlivened by glimpses of the Kannada people and their customs. Worthy of particular mention is the splendid vacana poetry of the Viraśaiva saints – free verse of mystical and gnomic import in colloquial Kannada – produced in the tenth to twelfth centuries.
