Nagavarma I

Nāgavarma I (c. 990) was a noted Jain writer and poet in the Kannada language in the late 10th century. His two important works, both of which are extant, are Karnātaka Kādambari, a champu (mixed prose-verse metre) based romance novel and an adaptation of Bana's Sanskrit Kādambari, and Chandōmbudhi (also spelt Chhandombudhi, lit, "Ocean of prosody" or "Ocean of metres"), the earliest available work on Kannada prosody which Nāgavarma I claims would command the respect even of poet Kalidasa.^[2][3][4] According to the scholars K.A. Nilakanta Shastri and R. Narasimhacharya, Nāgavarma I belonged to a migrant Brahmin family originally from Vengi (in modern Andhra Pradesh).^[5] According to the modern Kannada poet and scholar Govinda Pai, Nāgavarma I lived from 950 CE to 1015 CE.^[1] So popular was Nāgavarma I's poetic skills that King Bhoja of Malwa (central India) presented him with horses, in appreciation of his poetic skills.^[6]