[1] He is considered to be one of the trailblazers in the native shatpadi (hexa-metre, six line verse) and sangatya (composition meant to be sung to the accompaniment of musical instrument) metric tradition that was popularised in Kannada literature during the rule of the Vijayanagara empire in modern Karnataka.
Ratnakaravarni of Mudabidri (c. 1557) was a court poet under the patronage of Bhairasa Wodeyar at Karkala, modern coastal Karnataka, and is famous for successfully integrating an element of worldly pleasure into asceticism and for treating the topic of erotics with discretion in a religious epic, his magnum opus, the Bharatesha Vaibhava.
Tradition has it that Ratnakaravarni converted to Veerashaivism when his magnum opus was initially scorned at (after a poet called Ravikirthi objected to a few verses in it) only to return to the Jain fold and pen other important writings.
[9] The author showers encomium on Bharata in his various roles as a monarch, husband, son, friend and a devotee, a rare description of a "perfect human being" among Jain writings.
Since details of the early life of Bharata as a young ruler did not exist in previous writings or in tradition, much of Ratnakaravarni's vivid description of that period was a product of his imagination.