CANARESE or Karnataka is an ancient classical and a modern dialect, the former con taining different inflexional terminations. Bala Kannada, is an ancient written character formerly used by the Canarese people in writing. Canarese is a language in the centre of the Indian Peninsula, spoken by about nine millions of people, partly under the Hyderabad, the Mysore, and the British Governments of Bombay and Madras. The ancient Hindu term, Karnatica, comprehended all the high table-land in the south of India above the Eastern and Western Ghats, and its rulers seem never to have held sway beneath the Ghats; though in the present day, by a strange fatality, it is now only the countries below the Ghats, the Carnatic on the cast and Canary on the west, to which the name of the ancient Karnatica kingdom has come to be applied, and its name, is now never given to the Bala Ghat, or country above the Ghats.
The great bulk of the Canarese-speaking people are of one race, who are pure Dravidians. They have adopted the Jaugaina sectarian faith, the followers of which, by their tenets, ought to have no caste distinctions. Most of their subdivisions are restricted to vegetable products as food ; and so carefully do they act up to these, that no one of these vegetarians will even bring any living creature for sale to any one of a flesh-eating people. Their sect is, perhaps, amongst the most exclusive of all in India. It is doubtless this tenderness towards animal life that guides them to their avocations, which are mostly those of civil life, cultivators and shopkeepers, and may have led to their non-resistance to invaders; but in all the great armies which the British have formed during the past century, of the Canarese Jangama sectarians not more 'than a few thousand men may have become soldiers, and certainly not even one of that portion who abstain from animal food. The Teling and Canarese nations have, till recently, continued equally advanced as to elementary school education ; and though, in this respect, both races fall short of the progress made by the energetic, restless, impetuous Tamil people, they are greatly in advance of the Mahratta.
For nearly 200 years the inland tract occupied by the Canarese-speaking people had been tra versed by great armies, bent on conquest, and since the fall of the great Vijayanagar dynasty all corners seem to have crossed this tract without opposition.
Canarese, properly the Kannadi or Karnataka language, is bordered by the Tamil and the Telugu on the east. It is spoken throughout the plateau of Mysore and in the western districts of the Nizam s territory as far north as the village of Murkundah, lying 30 miles south-west of Bedcr. Also it is spoken in part of the ancient Tuluva country on the Malabar coast, now long designated as Canara, a name which it acquired from having been subjected for centuries to the rule of Canarese princes. But in Canara, the Malealam„ the Konkani, and the Tuluva are also spoken, though less extensively than the Canarese. From A.D. 800 to 1500 it was free from any admixture of foreign words, but since then Sanskrit words have been extensively introduced ; and during the supremacy of Hydcr Ali and Tipu, Urdu words were largely imported into it in Mysore, while it added Mabratti in the N.W. and Telugu on ita N.E. The Canarese character differs slightly from the Telugu, from -which it has been borrowed, but the characters used for Tamil, Malealam, and Telugu are quite distinct from each other. The ancient Canarese, character, however, entirely differs from that of the modern Telugu, and the Canarese language differs even inure widely from the Telugu than it does from the Tamil. There is an ancient dialect of the Canarese language current, as well as modern, the latter differing from the former by the use of different inflexional termina tions. The ancient Canarese dialect, however, hark no connection with the Sanskrit character to which that name has been given, in which, viz. the Bala Kannada, many very ancient inscriptions in the Mahratta country as well as in Mysore are found.