Kannada

Kannada is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India and by minorities in all neighbouring states, with about 44 million native speakers. It is the official and administrative language of Karnataka, has scheduled status in India and has been declared one of the classical languages of India. Early Kannada literature was composed largely by Jaina court poets, and many texts from before the twelfth century were religious narratives about the Jain Tirthankaras. Kannada was the court language of many dynasties, among them the Kadamba, the Western Ganga, the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas and the Vijayanagara Empire. It is written in the Kannada script, which evolved from the fifth-century Kadamba script. In this atlas the entry names texts composed in Kannada.