Whose Culture is it? Contesting the Modem taught them writing, nourished their language (here, Kannada), showed them what poetry was, given them the grammar, the figures of speech, the mythology and the history needed by poetry. '. . . Their [the Aryans'] Sanskrit language and poetry brought only profit to the Dravidians and no loss at all—their language was 144 strengthened, their knowledge matured, their maia [beliefs, race] ennobled.711 Srikantaiyya felt, however, that since those times our poetry had become feeble. Now, 'English Literature . . . must lend a helping hand to our diminished poetry; it is English Literature that must dispel the faults which have come down to our poetry from the Sanskrit (250). Only the best parts of the ancient poetry, selected through the discriminating evaluative process, was to be taught to Kannada children, preparing the soil for a time when 'the sages and the warriors of Aryabhoomi [the land of the Aryans] will be bom again, and bring dharma and peace to the country' (256). B.M. Sri, who begins his lecture with the appellation: Aryans!, published in 1921 his collection of translations from English poetry, English Geethagalu, which according to many literary critics marks the inauguration of modem Kannada poetry.12 A key text for the early modern conception of culture in Mysore is D.V. Gundappa's Samskriti (Gundappa [1953] 1985). Although this monograph was published only in 1953, there is enough evidence in DVG's voluminuous writings to suggest that its central ideas had been significant preoccupations of his from the early part of the century onwards. The work of samskriti or culture, according to him, is the work of 'scrubbing, washing and cleansing the mind' (Gundappa 1985: 15). Samskriti means making good, cleansing and ennobling. 'Good' refers to something being as it should be (14), since everything has its value only when it occupies an appropriate place. DVG quotes the English saying 'A thing out of its place is dirt' to support his argument about propriety. (Interestingly, throughout the 'modem' period, women and lower castes have been accused of making improper demands and forgetting their proper place, of behaving, in short, in an 'uncultured' fashion.13) How does one leam jeevanauchitya [appropriateness in one's life]? By antaranga krishi [cultivating the inner self], through study of books, worhip of art, company of discerning men, and observance of the ways of the world (15). DVG paraphrases Matthew Arnold extensively and approvingly, adding his own discussion of the notion of the 'gentleman' (in English in original), or the true man of culture, the examples of 'bom gentlemen' (in English in original) being Lord Rama from the Ramayana and Dharmaraya from the Mahabharata (20), both, needless to say, male as well as upper caste. Awareness of his place, reiterates DVG, is the mark of the really cultured man (75), who is the only one who can carry out the work of evaluation (49). Culture and civilization hinge on maintaining propriety, and any transgression of one's station would result in what DVG's metaphors repeatedly warn us about: pollution. The text dwells constantly on notions of madi and mailige (purity and pollution), most shockingly in its last sentence, where DVG declares that 'the road of culture is one without a trace of stubbornness or crudeness; instead it is the road of humility and respect, for what is the difference between a life without humility and respect and the life of a dog that lunges for Journal of Arts & Ideas