command of both Kannada and Sanskrit. Although Sri Ponna borrowed significantly from Kalidasa's earlier works, his Santipurana is considered an important Jain purana. Chalukya court From the late 10th century, Kannada literature made considerable progress under the patronage of the new overlords of the Deccan, the Western Chalukyas and their feudatories: the Hoysalas, the southern Kalachuris of Kalyanis, the Seuna Yadavas of Devagiri and Silharas of Karad. The skill of Kannada poets was appreciated in distant lands. King Bhoja of Malwa in central India presented Nagavarma I, a writer of prosody and romance classics, with horses as a mark of his admiration. Ranna was the court poet of the Western Chalukya kings Tailapa II and Satyashraya. He was also patronised by Attimabbe, a devout Jain woman. Ranna's poetic writings reached their zenith with Sahasa Bhima Vijaya ("Victory of the bold Bhima", also called Gada Yudda or "Battle of Clubs", 982), which describes the conflict between Bhima and Duryodhana in his version of the Mahabharata epic, one of the earliest poetic elegies in the Kannada language. Unlike Pampa, who glorified Arjuna and Karna in his writing, Ranna eulogised his patron King Satyashraya and favourably compared him to Bhima, whom he crowned at the end of the Mahabharata war. His other well-known writing is the Ajitha purana (993), which recounts the life of the second Jain Tirthankar Ajitanatha. Ranna was bestowed the title Kavi Chakravathi ("Emperor among poets") by his patron king. Among grammarians, Nagavarma-II, Katakacharya (poet laureate) of the Chalukya king Jagadhekamalla II made significant contributions with his works in grammar, poetry, prosody, and vocabulary; these are standard authorities and their importance to the study of Kannada language is well acknowledged. Among his other writings, the Kavyavalokana on grammar and rhetoric and the Karnataka Bhashabhushana (1145) on grammar are historically significant. However, the discovery of Vardhamana Puranam (1042), which has been ascribed by some scholars to Nagavarma II, has created uncertainty about his actual lifetime since it suggests that he may have lived a century earlier and been patronised by Jayasimha II. Hoysala period In the late 12th century, the Hoysalas, a powerful hill tribe from the Malnad region in modern southern Karnataka, exploited the political uncertainty in the Deccan to gain dominance in the region south of the Krishna River in southern India. A new chronological era was adopted, imperial titles were claimed and Kannada literature flourished with such noted