Sri wrote three tragic plays namely, Gadayuddha natakam, Asvatthaman and Parasikaru. In the first one, Sri had tried to adapt Ranna's Gadayuddha, a tenth century Jaina epic in Campu style, to the form of a Greek tragedy. Asvatthaman is an adaptation based on Sophocles's Greek tragedy Ajax and Parasikaru is a translation of Aeschylus's Greek tragedy Persians. Parasikaru has been excluded from the discussion here because as a stright forward translation it did not generate the type of controversy that the other two plays have generated and thus is not relevant for the discussion undertaken here. Sitharamaiya, 1946 points out that Sri also had a plan to adapt Euripidis's Bacchae into Kannada to write a tragedy involving Krishna as the main character. However, he appears to have hesitated over such an attempt following the controversies raised on Aswatthaman and subsequently abandoned the idea. Gadayuddha nataka should be seen as an attempt by Sri to explore the possibilities of adapting the technicalities of Greek tragedy to themes form Indian mythology. It is an experimentation similar to his Inglish gitagalu (1921), a translation/adaptation of English romantic poetry into Kannada. Kulkarni. (1941:79) claims that Sri himself had given the analogy of 'the damsel in distress' to the tragedy that is hidden in Ranna's epic Gadayuddha and his own role as 'Prince Charming' in rescuing it from the holds of the tenth century epic.

It may not be just accidental that Rama's Duryodhana, being modeled on the Jaina pratinayaka model (dhiroddhata type), and having inherent characteristics of becoming a tragic hero, provided an ideal opportunity for such an experimentation. More over, Ranna's epic itself is composed in a dramatic framework. Its dialogue oriented nature rather than epic narration, the actions and situations that are appropriate to a play, the existence of the character of Vidusaka that usually is absent in the Campu epic tradition adds further justification to the claim that Ranna himself might have planned it to be a play first, but subsequently decided to write it as a Campu epic. However, it is only a speculation and it is difficult to get convinced by this argument as the genre drama itself is conspicuously absent not only in ancient and medieval Kannada literature but also in other regional literatures of India.

With regard to the success that Sri achieved in adapting Ranna's Gadayuddha into Greek tragedy, the following observation of Ranganna, (1941:72) is noteworthy.

"In several aspects like the constitution of plot, characterization, temporal sequencing and ambition, Gadayuddha nataka follows the pattern of a Greek tragedy right from the beginning to the end... If a chorus had been introduced and scenes like showing the clash, collapse of a character on the stage after having lost the consciousness, kicking the headgear of the opponent and the death had been avoided, this play would have become a perfect example of Greek tragedy.