Durgasimha

Who is Durgasimha?

Durgasimha was the minister of war and peace of Western Chalukya King Jayasimha II. Durgasimha adapted the well-known set of fables, Panchatantra, from Sanskrit language into Kannada language in champu metre. The Sanskrit version, written by Vasubhaga Datta, is known to have originated from the Paishchi Prakrit original, Brihatkatha by Gunadhya. The Kannada language version, whose central theme has a strong Jain bent, contains 60 fables, 13 of which are original stories. All the stories have morality as their theme and carry a summary section. The Kannada version is the earliest Indian vernacular version, and the author, being a minister, not surprisingly, choose to write a book on political science. The scholar R. Narasimhachar fixed the date of this work as c. 1025, but the modern Kannada poet and scholar Govinda Pai dated the work to March 8, 1031, based on information in the concluding stanza of the manuscript.