Reading has been an extensively studied topic in the Western hemisphere for several decades, and an enormous amount of empirical data has accumulated on various aspects of reading alphabetic writing systems like English. Of late, there has been some interest in the processing of non-alphabetic scripts. However, there is hardly any empirical research base on several of these writing systems. Two experiments are reported on factors influencing rapid reading of words in Kannada, a Dravidian language spoken in southern India. The results indicate that word frequency and word type (concrete vs. abstract) do not affect Kannada word reading latencies (Experiment 1), whereas syllable length, orthographic complexity, and phoneme/grapheme sequence irregularity do affect reading latencies (Experiment 2). The results are discussed in terms of the need for caution in generalizing from studies based on alphabetic scripts, and point to the relevance of considering orthography-specific variables in understanding reading time, even in adult, proficient readers.