Madhuravijayam

The Madhuravijayam a memoir written in poetry speaks about the colossal warrior Kumara Kampanna. This famous Sanskrit poem was composed by Gangadevi, a princess of the royal house of Vijayanagara. She was the wife of prince Kumara Kampanna, son of the Vijayanagara emperor Bukka I who ruled over a vast portion of South India in the 14th century A. D. Kumara Kampanna, a brave warrior and a brilliant general was sent by his father to defeat the Sultan of Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and to bring the Tamil country under the fold of the Vijayanagara empire.

The Madhuravijayam, also known as the Vira Kamparaya Charitam, deserves a special place among the numerous other Sanskrit works. It is centres around his victorious expedition to Madurai, his defeating many adversaries enroute and finally with the killing of the king of Madurai in 1371 A.D.

Gangadevi was a scholar and a poet of a very high order as seen from this poem. In it she names various great Sanskrit poets of ancient India and the outstanding quality of each one of them. However, this poem has become very famous, not only on account of its poetic quality but also because it is an authentic historical work giving a graphic account of the political, administrative, economic and social conditions of the Vijayanagara times. In it are found the names of the contemporary kings and feudatories, the lineage of the Vijayanagara emperors, a description of the grand city of Vijayanagara (Hampi in present-day Karnataka), and the early life of prince Kampanna, the size and might of the Vijayanagara army and their finally the march to the Tamil country as well as the seige of Madurai. Kampanna`s fair and affluent rule in Kanchipuram, the allies like the Keralas and Pandyas, temporary camps set up at various places are all given in great detail.

The contents of the Madhuravijayam, over the years, have provided historians and archaeologists with ample data to reconstruct the history of the mighty Vijayanagara dynasty.