Dr. I. M. Muthanna was a noted Indian writer, scholar and translator; he wrote in English,
Kannada
Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...
and
Kodava takk
The Kodava (, natively: ''Koḍava takkï'', , meaning 'speech of Kodavas', Angloid name: Codava, Coorgi) is a Dravidian language spoken in Kodagu district (Coorg) in Southern Karnataka, India.
It is an endangered language. The term Kodava ...
and studied history, folklore and international studies. He was born in
Kodagu
Kodagu district () (also known by its former name Coorg) is an administrative List of districts of Karnataka, district in the Karnataka state of India. Before 1956, it was an administratively separate Coorg State at which point it was merged ...
into the
Kodava (Coorg) community. He spent much of his later life in Canada. He is also responsible to developing the Muthanna script for Kodava Takk that has been accepted as the official script of the language by the
Government of Karnataka
The Government of Karnataka, abbreviated as GoK or GoKA, formerly known as Government of Mysore (1956–1974), is a democratically elected state body with the governor as the ceremonial head to govern the Southwest Indian state of Karnataka ...
.
Work
Some of the books that he wrote are listed below:
*''A tiny model state of South India'' (in 1953)
*''Indo-Ethiopian relations for centuries'' (in 1961)
*''Muttaṇṇana kavanagaḷu'' (Kannada anthology in 1962)
*''History of Karnataka: history, administration & culture'' (in 1962)
*''General Cariappa: (the first Indian commander-in-chief)'' (in 1964)
*''The Coorg memoirs (the story of the Kodavas): Muthanna speaks out'' (in 1971),
*''General Thimmayya (former: Chief of Army Staff, India; Chairman, N.N.R.C., Korea; Commander, U.N. Forces, Cyprus)'' (in 1972),
*''People of India in North America (part one)'' (in 1975),
*''Karnataka, history, administration & culture'' (in 1977)
*''Tipu Sultan x'rayed'' (in 1980),
*''People of India in North America (United States, Canada, W. Indies, & Fiji): immigration history of East-Indians up to 1960'' (in 1982),
*''Koḍava Kannaḍa nighaṇṭu : Koḍava takk nighaṇṭ'' (Kodava-Kannada dictionary in 1983),
*''Mother Besant and Mahatma Gandhi'' (in 1986),
*''Kodavas & their gala "lela": Kodava folklores & songs'' (in 1987)
References
Main sources
#Jagathigonde Kodagu, by K P Muththanna, 1969.
#Kodavas, by B D Ganapathy, 1980.
#A study of the Origin of Coorgs, by Lt Col K C Ponnappa (Rtd), 1999.
Poets from Karnataka
Indian male poets
20th-century Indian translators
Kodava people
Kodava Takk
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