Foreword

The Kannada language... has hardly received from European scholars the recognition and attention which it deserved. It is the most mellifluous of all the Indian vernaculars, and the richest in capability and force of expression.-J.F. Fleet The present study is about fiction in Kannada (also known as Canarese), one of the most highly developed literary languages of India. What J.F. Fleet, a nineteenth-century colonial civil servant who was one of the rare early researchers in the field of Kann..