Introductory Essay – Endnote 9

9 Karnata Dravida

Karnata Dravida” is Prof. Adam Hardy’s coinage for the architectural language which developed in Karnataka between 600 and 1300 C.E.; the term is derived from the language family of its practitioners. The Dravidian clade, possibly the indigenous languages of the Indian sub-continent, concentrated today in its south, includes the 250 million speakers of: 1) Telugu, mainly in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states, 2) Tamil in Tamil Nadu and northeast Sri Lanka, 3) Kannada in Karnataka and 4) Malayalam in Kerala. “Dravidian,” not known to be related to any other linguistic grouping, including the Indo-European languages of the north such as Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Bengali, has also been suggested as the ancient, still undeciphered language of the Indus Valley or Harappan civilization (3300-1900 B.C.E.) Kannada, the language, (Kannadiga is the ethnonym) is attested epigraphically from the 4th Century C.E. and was the administrative and literary language of the three dynasties, Early Chalukya, Later Chalukya and Hoysala, whose temples are documented on this website, as well as, the Rashtrakuta (753-982) and Vijayanagara Empires (1336-1565,) as well as the Wadiyar rajas of Mysore (1553-1950.)