MadhuràVijayam (Sanskrit: à ¤®à ¤§à ¥Âà ¤°à ¤¾à ¤µà ¤¿à ¤Âà ¤¯à ¤®à ¥Â), meaning "The Victory of Madurai", is a 14th-century Sanskrit poem written by the poet Gangadevi. It is also named Vira Kamparaya Charitham by the poet. It chronicles the life of Kumara Kampana, a prince of the Vijayanagara Empire and the second son of Bukka Raya I. The poem describes in detail, the conquest of the Madurai Sultanate by the Vijayanagara Empire.
The poem along with Ibn Battuta's memoirs and epigraphical and numismatic records, has been used as a historical source for determining the history of the Madurai Sultanate and the Vijayanagara Empire's conquest of the Sultanate.
Madhura Vijayam (lit. The conquest of Madhura (Madurai)) or Vira Kamparaya Charitham (lit. The history of the brave king Kampa) is a mahÃÂkÃÂvya (epic poem) in nine cantos (chapters), though possibly there was an extra canto (now lost) between the eighth and final canto. The available text contains 500-odd verses.
The text from the Madhura Vijayam as translated by Henry Heras describe thus:
M. Krishnamachariar in his History of Classical Sanskrit Literature describes the narrative as consisting of "melodious verses" and summarizes it thus:
In the early chapters, Gangadevi, the wife of Kumara Kampanna II, describes the historical background of the Vijayanagara Empire, the benevolent rule of Bukka I, the birth and early life of Kumara Kampanna. The middle chapters detail the adulthood actions of Kampanna, his south bound invasion and conquest of Kanchipuram. After conquering Kanchipuram and subduing Sambuvaraya chieftain, Kampanna enjoys a brief interlude while consolidating his southern conquests. He is visited by a strange woman (described as the Goddess Meenakshi in disguise) who pleads with him to liberate South India from the rule of the Madurai Sultanate. Heeding her exhortation, Kampanna resumes his invasion of the South. The final chapters chronicle his invasion of Madurai, where he destroys the Muslim armies, slays the last sultan in single combat and restores the temple of Srirangam to its old glory.
The fact that the Madhura Vijayam refers to the Ká¹Âá¹£á¹Âa-kará¹ÂÃÂmá¹Âta of LëlÃÂà Âuka, praising him (in verse 1.12) immediately after Daá¹Âá¸Âin and Bhavabhà «ti, has been used to fix a bound on the date of its author. S. K. De, in History of Sanskrit Literature co-written with S. N. Dasgupta, mentions this poem in the section on poems with historical themes alongside the later RaghunÃÂthÃÂbhyudaya of RÃÂmabhadrÃÂmbà(which is on Raghunatha Nayaka). Again, in the section on the anthologies and women poets, along with the later TirumalÃÂmbàwho wrote the VaradÃÂmbikÃÂ-Pariá¹Âaya, he calls Gaá¹ gÃÂdevë a "more gifted" poet, and the poem as "written in a simple style, comparatively free from the pedantry of grammar and rhetoric". Similarly, Dasgupta, in the section on historical kÃÂvyas, mentions it alongside the Hammëra-kÃÂvya.
Madhura Vijayam was discovered in 1916 in a private traditional library at Thiruvananthapuram by Pandit N Ramasvami Sastriar. It was found in the form of a single manuscript of sixty-one palm leaves, bound between two other unrelated works. The available poem is made up of nine cantos (chapters) containing 500-odd verses, with some verses incomplete and others missing and presumed lost, including possibly an entire canto between the eighth and final canto.
Though the printed editions have been based on this single manuscript discovered in Trivandrum, the New Catalogus Catalogorum lists three other manuscripts discovered later: two of them are also in Trivandrum, and the third, in Lahore, has even less text (contains only seven cantos).
Salman Rushdie's novel Victory City is framed as a fictional retelling of Madhura Vijayam and the life of Gangadevi.