KANNADA AND PRAKRIT The inter action between Kannada and Prakrit
dates back to the pre Christian era. The presence of the Ashokan
Edicts in places like Brahmagiri, Maski, Siddapura, Jatinga
Rameshvara, Koppala etc point to the fact that Prakrit was read
and understood during that period. The arrival of Bhadrabahu
Bhattaraka and Chandragupta must have accelerated this process.
Kannada has absorbed certain elements of Sanskrit through
Prakrit and at times it has borrowed directly from Prakrit
itself. Re creation of literary texts and knowledge based texts
of Prakrit in Kannada has been going on for a long time.
However, our current interest is confined to the linguistic
influences. This is not confined to the vocabulary and extends
to certain morphological and syntactic rules also. The presence
of certain words purportedly from Kannada found in ancient
Prakrit texts has been quoted in the discussions about the
antiquity of Kannada. ‘Gatha Saptashati’ by Halaraja, a work
composed in the 1st century A.D. contains