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Translation Practices in Pre-colonial India:94 Interrogating StereotypesJinasena and Gunabhadra is the first Jaina puranic text. But internalevidence in this text refers to a text by Kavi Parameshti as a sourcetext. Even though some of the Kannada epics also refer to KaviParameshti, whether they do so because Jinasena’s text claims so orthese later poets had seen Kavi Parameshti’s text is not known. It isthe usual tradition that while writing the epics these poets employ atechnique of saying that though there is an individual talent in theircomposition, the original story had a divine origin, and is retold byseveral revered Acharyas to claim a certain kind of sanctity for whatthey are composing. It is through this ploy/technique that they wouldcombine both individual talent and collective or shared tradition.The canonical classical Kannada literature is full of epicscomposed based on Mahapurana; it has triggered the imagination ofseveral later poets/scholars. 8 Mahapurana narrates the purana relatedto 24 Thirthankaras, 12 Chakravartis, 9 Balabhadras, 9 Narayanasand 9 Pratinarayanas. Later epics have expanded a particular story ofa Thirthankara or summarized the Mahapurana entirely, butfocussed on one or two Thirthankaras/Chakravartis or others. Eachlater epic not only consults Mahapurana, if we go by the claims ofthe poet in the opening stanzas of the epic, but also other epics thathave come in Kannada, Prakrit and Sanskrit. Only a thorough textualanalysis would reveal whether they simply named the earliertexts/poets or they have taken them as source texts.For example, the story of Yashodhara is retold by many.According to A.N Upadhye, who has written an introduction toVadiraja’s Yashodharacharitra (a Sanskrit epic of early 11 th century)with a Sanskrit commentary by Lakshmana, and edited with anEnglish translation in prose by K. Krishnamoorthy. There areimportant epics on the same theme before the Yashodharacharitra ofVadiraja. They are Prabhanjana’s work (which is not available andhence the title is unknown), Somadeva’s Yasastilaka (959 A.D.) and