High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Halmidi inscription is the oldest known Kannada language inscription in the Kannada script. Experts agree on the relative date (it is the oldest), but differ on absolute date. Estimates vary by about 50 years either side of about 500 AD (see details below). The inscription was discovered in 1936 by Dr. M. H. Krishna, the Director of Archaeology in the (princely) State of Mysore (present-day Karnataka region of India), in Halmidi, a village in the Hassan taluk.