At the arrival of Portuguese, Konkani literature was not a tabula rasa. It appears that we already had an early production of versatile prose in the form of Ramayana and Mahabharata. It also appears that Konkani had a script of its own. This script is said to Kandvi or Goym-kannadi. It is said to be akin to old or Halle Kannada. The records of the village communities of that time bear witness to that script. Goans were ruled by the Kannada rulers and hence it is but natural that Konkani script before the arrival of the Portuguese was Kandvi. This is why Rocky V. Miranda tells us that Konkani was called canarim at that time. Portuguese called it lingua de terra or bamhanachi basha. It has been speculated that the name canarim came from the Perso-Arabic Kinara for coast. It referred to the language of the people who were living on the coast, kinara. But this speculation is set aside by Prof. Olivin Gomes as there are other people living along the coast who speak other languages. Prof. Gomes tells us that those that referred to Konkani as canarim were using the term to deliberately distinguish it from canares or Kannada owing to fact that the language that they encountered was written in a script similar but slightly different to that which was used to write Kannada. Dr. Mario Saldanha teaches that it was the mispronunciation of kannadi that became canarim.
The native language of the people who came under the rule of Portuguese whom we call Goans today was certainly distinct as attested by Portuguese traveller Tome Pires in his book Summa Oriental which is regarded as the earliest European report on Goa and the East. We have the name of the language spoken by the people of Goa as Konkani documentation of the letters of the missionaries collected and published in the books Documenta Indica and Documentacao para a historia das missoes do Padroado do Portuguese do Oriente. Further, we find the Konkani named as canarim in the syllabus of the famous College of St. Paul of the Jesuits founded in 1541. Only other language that found its place in that esteemed syllabus was Gujrati. It appears that Marathi did not have any space in the syllabus of that great College. This does not mean that the Jesuit did not give importance to Marathi. Indeed they studied Marathi. We have Fr. Thomas Stephens composing the famous Krist Purana in Marathi and Fr. Ignazio Acromone ( who has the distinction of being first to translate in part the Bible in any Indian language when he did it in Konakani) also composed a comparative grammatical treatise dealing with Konkani and Marathi. Here we have to note that he uses the term Konkani while calling Marathi Decanica. This does indicates that Konkani had its own distinct being before the arrival of the Portuguese and in no way we can agree that it is a dialect of Marathi.
The sixteen century Konkani Ramayana and Mahabharata demonstrate the existence of Konkani literature and proves that the likes of Priolkar were wrong to claim that Konkani was simply a dialect of Marathi and did not have any literature as well as was not known by its name even until a hundred years from 1963. Moreover at the arrival of the Portuguese there does not seem to be any Marathi literature among the elites and upper castes in Goa. if it was there the missionaries should have mentioned in their documentation. What we have is that Konkani is given a pride of place by the Portuguese and the missionaries right from the time of their arrival. They do mention about Marathi language but do not have the same praise that they seem to have for Konkani. In fact , they regard that Konkani is the language of the elite or upper caste in Goa. They call Konkani brahmin’s language. Prof. Olivin Gomes tells us that Portuguese simply wrote of Marathi or called it Marasta Bramhana . Hence, those that think that Konkani is subordinate to Marathi are mistaken and have no historical backing. Besides, we have names of properties, villages, places and wards as well as dovornem, gumot, deities and sprits that are all in Konkani . Prof. Olivino Gomes says that it is only with the coming of Marathi priests in the temples of Goa in the 17th century that Marathi got entry or foothold into in Goa. This is the time when some of the Goans had embraced catholic faith in Goa. Hence, the status of Konkani as an independent and distinct language cannot be disputed. Neither can we claim that nagri as the natural script of Konkani. History tells us otherwise. Hence, pluralization of the scripts of Goa is the way ahead and is in tune with its complex history.
