Writing in Kannada, Being a Jain: Sanskrit as a Site of Contestation in a Fourteenth-Century Kannada Text

Abstract Something happened in twelfth-century Karnataka that pushed the Jain community of this region to reconsider its own place and identity. Scholars have associated it with the “ vacana movement” and with the rise of the Vīraśaivas, which brought about an end to Jain early dominance over the Kannada literary world. But the narrative of a “Jain period” followed by a “Śaiva period” conceals a more complex reality in which Jain voices in Kannada persisted long after these events took place. This article examines what we can learn by reading a Jain author who wrote two centuries after the end of this “Jain period.” By examining how Vṛttavilāsa employed Sanskrit verses in his Kannada Investigation of Dharma ( Dharmaparīkṣe) ( c .1360 CE ), I argue that this Jain author reclaimed Sanskrit as a vehicle of Jain voices, in order to connect himself, his work, and his audience, with a preceding Jain tradition that transcended his immediate regional community.