undying attachment and fidelity to their masters by readily laying down their lives, One or two instances will suffice. On tlhe death of the Hoysala king Ballala II in 1220, a prince of the name of Kuvara-Lakshma, deeming it a shanie to survive his lord, died with his wife and his whole battalion of a thousand choice warriors. Honni, a female servant of Honnavve-payakıtı, had her head cut off on the death of her mistress in 1215.2 Another reinarkahle instance of selfless devotion is furnished by a family of chiefs who were faıhful servants of the Hoysala kings. They took upon themselves a vow not to survive their lords and committed suicide along with their wives and male and female servants in regular succession on the death of their successive masters3 Antiquity of the Kannada Language. The occurrence of some Kannada words in a Greek drama of the 2nd century A D. discovered at Oxyrhincus in Lower Egypt has already been referred to in the Introduction to Volume I of the LIVES OF KANNADA POETS4. Among the Kannada authors that preceded him, Nrupatunga men. tionsDurvinitd who is most probably the Ganga king of that nanie who ruled about A D 500 Kaninala inscriptions make their appearance from about the 5th century. Besides the authors named by Nrı patunga, Srirardhadeva and Syamakundacharya appear to have written in Kannada in about 700 Amirtasagard, a Jaina Tamil poet who flourished before the 11th century, states in his Yuppurungalakkarigan, a work on prosody, that there existed in the Kannada language a work on prosody named Gunngankı yain and that the Tamil work adoptert some of its characteristics, one of which was addressing the rules to a woman Unfortunately the name of the author is not given, nor has the work come down to us It is very probable that this author dedicated his work to the Eastern Chalukya king Vijayaditya tid (844-888) who had the distinctive epithets Gunaga, Gunaganka and Gunake nalla
I, Belur II2, 2. Molakalmumu 12, 3. Krislingidjapete 10, 4. Page 2.
