 With the ending of the Gupta Dynasty in northern India in the early 6th century , major changes began taking place in the Deccan south of the Vindyas and in the southern regions of India . These changes were not only political but also linguistic and cultural . The royal courts of peninsular India ( outside of Tamilakam ) interfaced between the increasing use of the local Kannada language and the expanding Sanskritic culture . Inscriptions , including those that were bilingual , demonstrate the use of Kannada as the primary administrative language in conjunction with Sanskrit . Government archives used Kannada for recording pragmatic information relating to grants of land . The local language formed the desi ( popular ) literature while literature in Sanskrit was more marga ( formal ) . Educational institutions and places of higher learning ( ghatikas ) taught in Sanskrit , the language of the learned Brahmins , while Kannada increasingly became the speech of personal expression of devotional closeness of a worshipper to a private deity . The patronage Kannada received from rich and literate Jains eventually led to its use in the devotional movements of later centuries . 
