Sri Ponna (c. 950) was a Kannada poet in the court of Rashtrakuta Dynasty king
Krishna IIIKrishna III whose Kannada name was Kannara was the last great warrior and able monarch of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty of Manyakheta. He was a shrewd administrator and skillful military campaigner. He waged many wars to bring back the glory of the Rashtrakutas and played an important role in...
(939–968 CE). The emperor honoured Ponna with the title "emperor among poets" (
Kavichakravarthi) for his domination of the Kannada literary circles of the time, and the title "imperial poet of two languages" (
Ubhayakavi Chakravarti) for his command over
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
as well. Ponna is often considered one among the "three gems of
Kannada literatureKannada literature is the corpus of written forms of the Kannada language, a member of the Dravidian family spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka and written in the Kannada script....
" (
Ratnatraya,
lit meaning "three gems";
Adikavi PampaPampa , also known as Adikavi Pampa , is one of the greatest Kannada poets of all time. He was born either in Annigeri or Banavasi, in modern Karnataka state, or in Vemulavada, Karimnagar District in modern Andhra Pradesh, and was the court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari, a Rashtrakuta feudatory...
and
RannaRanna was one of the earliest poets of Kannada language.Ranna, Adikavi Pampa and Sri Ponna together are called "three gems of Kannada literature".-Early days:Ranna was born on 949 C.E. in Muduvolalu Bagalkot district, Karnataka....
being the other two) for ushering it in full panoply.
Sri Ponna (c. 950) was a Kannada poet in the court of Rashtrakuta Dynasty king
Krishna IIIKrishna III whose Kannada name was Kannara was the last great warrior and able monarch of the Rashtrakuta Dynasty of Manyakheta. He was a shrewd administrator and skillful military campaigner. He waged many wars to bring back the glory of the Rashtrakutas and played an important role in...
(939–968 CE). The emperor honoured Ponna with the title "emperor among poets" (
Kavichakravarthi) for his domination of the Kannada literary circles of the time, and the title "imperial poet of two languages" (
Ubhayakavi Chakravarti) for his command over
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
as well. Ponna is often considered one among the "three gems of
Kannada literatureKannada literature is the corpus of written forms of the Kannada language, a member of the Dravidian family spoken mainly in the Indian state of Karnataka and written in the Kannada script....
" (
Ratnatraya,
lit meaning "three gems";
Adikavi PampaPampa , also known as Adikavi Pampa , is one of the greatest Kannada poets of all time. He was born either in Annigeri or Banavasi, in modern Karnataka state, or in Vemulavada, Karimnagar District in modern Andhra Pradesh, and was the court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari, a Rashtrakuta feudatory...
and
RannaRanna was one of the earliest poets of Kannada language.Ranna, Adikavi Pampa and Sri Ponna together are called "three gems of Kannada literature".-Early days:Ranna was born on 949 C.E. in Muduvolalu Bagalkot district, Karnataka....
being the other two) for ushering it in full panoply. According to the scholar R. Narasimhacharya, Ponna is known to have claimed superiority over all the poets of the time. According to scholars Nilakanta Shastri and E.P. Rice, Ponna belonged to
VengiThe Vengi kingdom extended from the Godavari River in the north to Mount Mahendragiri in the southeast and to just south of the banks of River Krishna in the south of India. This area was part of Kalinga until that kingdom was conquered by Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan Empire in the mid 200s BC...
, in modern
Andhra PradeshAndhra Pradesh , abbreviated A.P., is a state situated on the south-eastern coast of India. It is India's fourth largest state by area and fifth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Hyderabad...
, but later migrated to
ManyakhetaManyakheta on the banks of Kagina River in Gulbarga district, Karnataka state was the capital of Rashtrakutas from . It is 40 km from Gulbarga city. The capital was moved from Mayurkhandi in Bidar district to Manyakheta during the rule of Amoghavarsha I...
(in modern
Gulbarga districtGulbarga District Gulbarga District Gulbarga District (Kannada ಕಲಬುರ್ಗಿ(ಗುಲ್ಬರ್ಗ), (Urdu گلبرگہ ), is situated between 76°.04' and 77°.42 east longitude, and 16°.12' and 17°.46' north latitude, covering an area of 16,224 square kilometres. Gulbarga district was formerly part of Hyderabad state and...
,
KarnatakaKarnataka is a state in the southern part of India. It was created on November 1, 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act...
), the Rashtrakuta capital, after his conversion to the
JainJainism is an ancient dharmic religion from India that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Its philosophy and practice relies mainly on self-effort in progressing the soul on the spiritual ladder to divine consciousness...
religion.
Writings
His most famous extant works in Kannada are
Shantipurana, written in
champu style (mixed prose-verse classical composition style inherited from Sanskrit),
Bhuvanaika-Ramabhyudaya, a eulogical writing, and
Jinaksharamale, a Jain
Purana and an acrostic poem written in praise of noted Jain saints and Tirthankars (
Jainas) in 39 chapetrs (
kandas). It is uncertian whether his fourth writing, the extinct
Gatapratiagata, was in Kannada or Sanskrit.
Shantipurana is an important Jain purana, and a eulogy of the 16th Jain
TirthankarIn Jainism, a Tirthankar is a human being who achieves enlightenment through asceticism and who then becomes a role-model teacher for those seeking spiritual guidance...
and emperor of Jainism,
ShantinathShantinath was the sixteenth Jain Tirthankar of the present age . According to Jain beliefs, he became a siddha, a liberated soul which has destroyed all of its karma. Shantinath was born to King Viswasen Raja and Queen Achira Rani at Hastinapur in the Ikshvaku clan...
a. It was written to commomorate the attainment of
nirvanaIn sramanic thought, Nirvana is the state of being free from suffering. It is an important concept in Buddhism and Jainism....
("salvation") of a Jain guru called Jainachandra Deva. The writing comprises twelve sections (
ashwasas) of which nine sections focus on Shantinatha's eleven previous births, and the remaining three sections give biographical details of the
protagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, video game, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to share the most empathy...
. In this writing, Ponna borrowed significantly from previous works of the Sanskrit poet
KalidasaKālidāsa was a renowned Classical Sanskrit writer, widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. His floruit cannot be dated with precision, but most likely falls within the Gupta period, probably in the 4th or 5th century or 6th century.His place in Sanskrit...
though he does rise to great heights in his narration justifying his claim to scholarship (
Vidwat Kavi). Ponna also seems to have used as a source, a narrative poem written by a Kannada poet called
AsagaAsaga was a mid-9th century Digambara Jain poet of Jain literature as well as early Kannada literature, as he wrote both in Sanskrit and Kannada languages...
, whose works are now extinct. Ponna's claim that his work is superior to that of Asaga gives us information that the latter must have been considered an important poet of that era.
Scholars were divided about Ponna's protagonist in
Bhuvanaika-Ramabhyudaya. The scholar D.L. Narasimhachar had opined that Ponna had eulogised Shankaraganda, a vassal king under emperor Krishna III. This opinion was based on the fact that Shankaraganda held the honorific
Bhuvanaikarama. However, modern Kannada poet Govinda Pai argued in his 1936 article,
Ponnana Bhuvanaikaramanu yaru ("Who was Ponna's Bhuvanaikarama"?), that king Shankaraganda being a Jain by faith could not have been the central figure in a secular writing and that emperor Krishna III also held the same title. Later, D.L. Narasimhachar himself confirmed the validity of Govinda Pai's findings.
Influence and style
Ponna was one of the most-notable writers of the classical age of Kannada literature, a period usually categorised as starting from the middle of 10th century and lasting for about a hundred and fifty years thereafter. During this era, Ponna and two other poets,
Adikavi PampaPampa , also known as Adikavi Pampa , is one of the greatest Kannada poets of all time. He was born either in Annigeri or Banavasi, in modern Karnataka state, or in Vemulavada, Karimnagar District in modern Andhra Pradesh, and was the court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari, a Rashtrakuta feudatory...
and
RannaRanna was one of the earliest poets of Kannada language.Ranna, Adikavi Pampa and Sri Ponna together are called "three gems of Kannada literature".-Early days:Ranna was born on 949 C.E. in Muduvolalu Bagalkot district, Karnataka....
, produced works of lasting merit, writings that set a standard in poetic form and composition that would influence future poets for centuries. So adept were these poets that their style of
champu brought together the best of the earlier masters of Sanskrit literature in various proportions, giving their narration an artificiality: poet Bana's prose, Kalidasa's graceful verses, Bhatta Narayana's dramaticism and Megaduta's lyrical flavour are seen used deftly giving naturalised and assimilated Sanskrit words in the Kannada language priority over native (
desi) expressions. Despite adherence to strict classical Sanskritic models (
margam), the native composition styles of Kannada language, such as the
tripadiTripadi is a metre in the Kannada language dating back to c. 700 CE.-Definition:...
(three-line verse), are found distributed in the narratives poems of these poets. Just as Ponna eulogised his patron king Krishna III as
Bhuvanaikarama, so did the other Jain poets of the classical age. Kannada writings by them used impressive Sanskrit-derived verses interspersed with prose to extol the virtues of their protagonists, who were often compared to heroes from the Hindu epics. While
Adikavi PampaPampa , also known as Adikavi Pampa , is one of the greatest Kannada poets of all time. He was born either in Annigeri or Banavasi, in modern Karnataka state, or in Vemulavada, Karimnagar District in modern Andhra Pradesh, and was the court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari, a Rashtrakuta feudatory...
(
Pampa Bharata, c. 941) compared his patron, the feudatory
ChalukyaThe Chalukya dynasty was an Indian royal dynasty that ruled large parts of southern and central India between the 6th and the 12th centuries. During this period, they ruled as three related, but individual dynasties. The earliest dynasty, known as the "Badami Chalukyas", ruled from their capital...
King Arikesari, to
PandavaIn the Hindu epic Mahābhārata, the Pandava brothers are the five acknowledged sons of Pandu , by his two wives Kunti and Madri. Their names are Yudhishtira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva. All five brothers were married to one woman, Draupadi...
prince
ArjunaArjuna, Arjun or Arjunaa is one of the heroes of the Hindu epic Mahābhārata. Arjuna, whose name means 'bright', 'shining', 'white' or 'silver' , was such a peerless archer that he is often referred to as Jishnu - the undefeatable...
, in his version of the Hindu epic
MahabharataThe Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the . The epic is part of the Hindu itihāsa , and forms an important part of Hindu mythology....
,
RannaRanna was one of the earliest poets of Kannada language.Ranna, Adikavi Pampa and Sri Ponna together are called "three gems of Kannada literature".-Early days:Ranna was born on 949 C.E. in Muduvolalu Bagalkot district, Karnataka....
(c. 983) found it suitable to compare his patron, Chalukya
King SatyasrayaSatyasraya was the king of the revived Western Chalukyas. He was a contemporary of the great Chola Rajaraja Chola I and led his kingdom with great valour and courage in maintaining the territorial integrity against the Chola onslaught into his kingdom...
, to Pandava prince
BhimaIn the Mahābhārata, Bhima was the second of the Pandava brothers. He was son of Kunti by Vayu, but like the other brothers, he was acknowledged son by Pandu . He was distinguished from his brothers by his great stature and strength....
.