KAVERY, kever-i, or CAVERY. A river of Southern India, rising in Coorg in the Ghats, near the west coast, at an altitude of 4000 feet (Slap: India. C 6). It flows southeast through Mysore and below Seringapa tam forms the beau tiful falls and rapids of Sivasamudram. Near Collegal it enters .Madras and, proceeding least Bhavani. Erode, and Karur, at Trichinopoli and Srirangam, divides into several deltaic channels, the central of which continues as t lle Kavery eastward past Conthaconum, and into the Bay of Bengal at Karikal. the southernmost channel, on which are situated Tanjore and Tiruvalnr, entering at Negapatam, and the principal and northernmost channel, the Coleroon, 92 miles long, debouching at Porto Novo. Owing to the velocity of its currents and its rapids, the Kavery is navigable only downward by small native craft. Its length is 415 miles. The irrigation system of its delta, dating from the second century, is the most ancient in India. The Kavery is also called by the Hindus 'Las Kshin Ganga' ('The Ganges of the South').
KAVI, (Skt., wise, poet). The ancient sacred language of Java (e.800-1400 In structure this language belongs to the :Malayo Polynesian group, and its inflection is essentially Javanese. There are three dialects of the Java nese—the vulgar tongue, the polite dialect, and the ancient. Ali these contain words from San skrit, Arabic. and Telugu, hrought in, not by con quest, but by religion and commerce, and they are written in alphabets which arc adaptations of the Indian Devanagari script. The largest infusion of loon-words is from Sanskrit. In the common language of Java the proportion of Sanskrit is almost 11 per cent., but in the recondite it is nearly 40 per cart. The introduction of Indian elements is traced to the immigration of the Brahmans from India about 2000 years ago, who brought with them Hindu civilization and re ligion. Kavi holds the same relation to Javanese
that Sanskrit does to the modern languages of India. In this dialect the Javanese writings, con sisting of poems, histories, romances, etc., are composed. :\luch of the literature is based on tho Indian epic of the Maloibliarata, as. for instance, the ieuruta-yi«Idha (partly translated in Raffles, History of Java, London, IS 1 T ), the A rjana Viroha (edited by Friederich, Bavaria, 1850 ; and by Kern, The Hague, 1371). In the fifteenth cen tury the Kavi, with Hinduism, was driven from Java to the small island of Bali. Consult : Hum boldt. Ucbcr die lialpi-Sprache (Berlin, 1836-39) : Friederich. l'oorloopig Vcrslag ran het Eiland Bali (Batavia, 1849-50) : Stuart, Kairi-Oor konden (Leyden. 1875) ; Jonker, En Oud jaraansek Wet buck (ib., 1885) ; Juynboll. Drie Hocken ran /id Oud-jovaanschc 1/a/zabhdrota 1893). An exhaustive dictionary of the language is being prepared by van der 'Funk, under the title: liaw-i-balineesch-nederlandsch troordcnbock.
KAW, ka, properly KAxsA. A Siouan tribe speaking a dialect of the Osage language, for merly occupying several villages on the lower Kansas River, in Kansas. and estimated about a century ago at 1300. In 1846 they were re moved to a reservation west of the Osage. in the present Oklahoma, and have since decreased rapidly. In 1875 they still numbered 516, but in 1900 there were but 217 remaining.• less than half of whom were full-hloods. In former cus toms they resembled the other buffalo-hunting tribes of the plains.