Three Poets Pampa, Ponna and Ranna are called as the ‘Three Jewels’ of:

Correct — A. Pampa, Ponna and Ranna are the Ratnatraya, the three gems of Kannada literature. All three wrote in Kannada in the tenth century, all three were Jain, and all three worked under royal patronage in the Deccan.

Pampa is the earliest and the best known of them, which is why the trio is placed in his century. Option (a) is the literature the three gems belong to.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  Sanskrit Literature — Sanskrit has no such trio. Its classical canon is remembered through individual poets and dramatists such as Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti.
• (c)
  Telugu Literature — Telugu has its own famous three, the Kavitrayam of Nannaya, Tikkana and Yerrapragada, who rendered the Mahabharata into Telugu — a different trio, and the reason this option tempts.
• (d)
  Tamil Literature — Tamil's early literature is organised around the Sangam corpus and Tolkappiyam, not around a group of tenth-century court poets.

Kannada's classical age opens in the tenth century under Rashtrakuta and Chalukya patronage, and the Ratnatraya are its founding figures.

Pampa wrote the Adipurana, a Jain religious work, and Vikramarjuna Vijaya, also called Pampa Bharata, which retells the Mahabharata with his patron cast in Arjuna's place.

Ponna wrote the Shanti Purana and carried the title Ubhaya Kavi Chakravarti, poet laureate in both Kannada and Sanskrit.

Ranna wrote the Ajitanatha Purana and Sahasa Bhima Vijaya, known as Gada Yuddha, on the mace duel between Bhima and Duryodhana.

Key facts

• Pampa, Ponna and Ranna are called the Ratnatraya, the three gems of Kannada literature.
• All three wrote in the tenth century, were Jain, and worked under Deccan royal patronage.
• Pampa's Vikramarjuna Vijaya, or Pampa Bharata, is a Kannada retelling of the Mahabharata.
• Telugu's comparable trio is the Kavitrayam of Nannaya, Tikkana and Yerrapragada.

Common traps

• Assuming any trio of early Indian poets must belong to Sanskrit.
• Swapping the Kannada Ratnatraya with the Telugu Kavitrayam.

No directly related past PYQ was found.