Pampa Bharata

Vikramarjuna Vijaya

Vikramarjuna Vijaya (Kannada- ವಿಕ್ರಮಾರ್ಜುನ ವಿಜಯ) (victory of the mighty Arjuna), also known as Pampa Bharatha is a classic work of the 10th century Jain poet Pampa (902–975 AD). It is an Kannada version of the great epic, the Mahabharata of Vyasa. Pampa choose the Arjuna, the central figure of the Pandava Clan, as the hero of his epic. This work differs from Mahabharata in several aspects, one of them being Arjuna crowned the king, subhadra the queen, after Kurukshetra war, instead of Yudhishthira, and Draupadi respectively.

A court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari II, a Rashtrakuta feudatory, he is most known for his epics, Vikramarjuna Vijaya (Pampa Bharata) and Adipurana, both written in Champu style, which he created and served as the model for all future works in the Kannada. The works of Jain writers Adikavi Pampa, Sri Ponna and Ranna, collectively called the "three gems of Kannada literature", heralded the age of classical Kannada in the 10th century, the Medieval Kannada literature.

Vikramarjuna Vijaya is a 10th century work of Adikavi Pampa.

This work is not an abridged version of Vyasa's Mahabharata, but, rather, a recreation of the original in the cultural context of Karnataka and the religious context of Jainism. The relatively less dominant and slightly Machiavellian role given to Krishna is a major change.

Pampa was the court poet of Chalukya King Arikesari, a Rashtrakuta feudatory. The work acquires a historical significance because of the equation made by the poet between Arjuna and Arikesari his patron king belonging to the Ganga dynasty. This work was trendsetting in Kannada both in terms of subject and the form.

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