Gangadevi
Gangadevi (IAST: Gaṅgādevī), also known as Gangambika (IAST: Gaṅgāmbikā), was a 14th-century princess and Sanskrit poet of the Vijayanagara Empire. She is best known for Madhura Vijayam, a courtly mahākāvya on the southern campaigns of her husband Kumara Kampana.[1]
Life and work
[edit]Gangadevi was the wife of Kumara Kampana, also styled Veerakamparaya, a son of Bukka Raya I.[1] Little is securely known of her life beyond her own writing. The opening canto invokes earlier Sanskrit poets before turning to Bukka's reign, Kampana's birth and his career.[2]
Gangadevi chronicled her husband's campaigns against the rulers of Tondaimandalam and the Madurai Sultanate in Madhura Vijayam, also known as Vīra-Kamparāya-Caritam.[3][4] The surviving poem has nine cantos. The 1957 edition counted 521 extant verses, estimated at least 70 more to be lost, and identified 58 as mutilated or incomplete.[2] Its narrative passes from Vijayanagara court life to Kampana's defeat of the Sambuvarayas and his advance towards Madurai. Though a literary epic, it has also been read with epigraphic evidence for Vijayanagara's expansion into the Tamil country.[2]
The poem survived in a damaged palm-leaf manuscript, brought to light at Trivandrum in 1916 by G. Harihara Sastri and V. Srinivasa Sastri; it was then in the possession of N. Ramaswami Sastri.[2] The first printed edition appeared that year, followed by a revised edition in 1924.[4] Annamalai University published S. Thiruvenkatachari's edition with an English translation in 1957.[2] The Hindu also reports that Sri Krishnamacharya of Srirangam produced a Tamil rendering and records a tradition that Gangadevi accompanied Kampana on campaign and rode into battle; the latter is not established by the surviving poem.[5]
Influence
[edit]Gangadevi is cited as an inspiration for Pampa Kampana, the poet-protagonist of Salman Rushdie's 2023 novel Victory City.[6]
References
[edit]- 1 2 Jackson, William J. (2016). Vijayanagara Voices. Routledge.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Thiruvenkatachari, S. (1957). Madhurāvijayam of Gangā Dēvi. Annamalai University.
- ↑ Suryanath U. Kamath, A Concise History of Karnataka from Pre-historic Times to the Present, Jupiter Books, 2001, p. 162.
- 1 2 Devi, Ganga (1924). Sastri, G. Harihara; Sastri, V. Srinivasa (eds.). Madhura Vijaya (or Virakamparaya Charita). Trivandrum: Sridhara Power Press.
- ↑ Basu, Soma (8 February 2012). "A poetic princess". The Hindu.
- ↑ "Salman Rushdie's new novel is an ode to storytelling and freedom". The Economist. 8 February 2023.
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