 <unk> , court poet of King Veera Ballala II and the <unk> King <unk> of <unk> , wrote Lilavati <unk> ( 1170 ) , the earliest available true fiction ( and hence a novel ) in Kannada , with an erotic bent . Written in the champu metre , with the ancient town <unk> as the background , it narrates the love story of a <unk> prince and a princess who eventually marry after facing many obstacles . The story is based on a c . 610 Sanskrit original called <unk> by <unk> . His other work , <unk> , unfinished on account of his death ( and hence called <unk> or " incomplete <unk> " ) , details the life of the 22nd Jain tirthankar <unk> while treating the life of the god Krishna from a Jain angle . 
