The Sources

Today if an enthusiast who wants to know more about the history of Mysore were to go on a quest, where does he/she get the sources to reconstruct this saga? Sadly there isnt one authoritative piece that can be referred to, but it is almost a jigsaw puzzle that needs to be put together from a myriad disconnected sources.

Perhaps the earliest attempt that was ever made to chronicle the history of Mysore and its kings was by Lt Col. Mark Wilks (1760–1831), the British Resident at the Court of Mysore, 1803–08. Rather strange isnt it that for a chronicle about our kings, we more often than not tend to rely on foreign sources and historians---so much for indigenous research and documentation!


Wilks' work, Historical Sketches of the South of India in an Attempt to Trace the History of Mysoor, was published in 1810 and has been quoted as an authority on the subject. But Wilks was operating in an India that was completely unaware of techniques of historical documentation. It was either court eulogizers or biased writers who had the onerous job of preserving the past. A lot of Wilks’ efforts are based on local sources, memoirs and translations. Like the predicament that faces historians today, the paucity of information till about the time of Haidar Ali (c. 1750s), plagued Wilks too. But it was his account that gave historians a faint idea of the times bygone.

Apart from a myriad myths and legends of the royal family, a number of inscriptions—lithic and copper plate—from Mysore, Hassan, Tumkur, Bangalore, Salem and Coimbatore have been compiled in the Epigraphica Carnatica, Mysore Archaeological Report, Inscriptions of the Madras Presidency, The Mackenzie Collection and The Madras Epigraphists’ Report. These are in Kannada and Sanskrit and date from the 16th to the mid-18th century. They simply document which king gave what gifts and grants to which temple or individuals. This helps to construct some of the events associated with a particular king.

Literary works have always mirrored society and the political situation of the times, and therefore are one option. In the case of the history of Mysore, the 17th and 18th century works in Kannada and Sanskrit mirror some of the events, but to a limited extent. Many of these are not published works and are still maintained as palm-leaf manuscripts in libraries in Mysore and Madras. But the thrust here seems to be more on religion, philosophy, poetry and literary value of the work rather than a serious and well thought-out process of documenting events and people. Some of them do deal with specific kings of the royal family like the Kanthirava Narasaraja Vijayam (c.1648) of Govinda Vaidya, Chikkadevaraja Vamshavali (c.1678–80), Chikkadevaraja Vijayam (c.1682–86), and Apratimavira Charitram (c.1695-1700) of Tirumalaraya, Soundaryakavya (c.1740) of Nuronda and so on.

Coins of the time, especially those of Ranadhira Kanthirava Narasaraja Wodeyar and Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar (1673–1704), throw some light on the general state of the economy, political evolution, religion of the king’s family and so on. But they also have their limitations. While a number of travelogues, chronicles and letters have been found—La Mission Du Madure (1659–86), Travels of the Jesuits (1743) of John Lockman, Dr John Fryer’s Travels in India (1676–1680), Niccolo Manucci’s Storio Do Mogor (1683–1708) to name a few—these are to be taken with a pinch of salt as they are the jottings of the Jesuit missionaries. They had their specific agendas and biases, were usually misinformed and tended to exaggerate.

Much later in time, secondary sources were added. These are: Mysuru Doregala Poorvabhyudaya Vivara (1710–14), Mysuru Nagarada Poorvottara (c.1734–40), Mysuru DoregaLa Vamshavali (c.1800), Mysuru Rajara Charitre (c.1800) by Venkataramanayya, Kaifiyats (c.1800–04), Keladi Nripa Vijayam (c.1800), Linganna Kavi’s Halegannada Chhampu (c.1830), Devachandra’s Rajavali Kathe (1838) and of course, the Palace-commissioned work, The Annals of the Mysore Royal Family, or Srimanmaharajaravara Vamshavali (1864–65).

It is in the light of this paucity and confusion that Wilks’ maiden effort becomes so appreciable an attempt. Also, in the wake of the uncertainty of the available sources, one tends to turn to the fables and legends for succour. The flavour of freshness they have and the fact of transfer by word of mouth from the time of the happening of the event (of course, discounting the distilling over the generations) makes them a tempting foundation to build our story on. But one must be incisive enough to know where to draw the line and what to take at pure face value.

Ajji certainly opened the windows of my mind to this vast plethora of sources....she almost pushed her unsuspecting grandson into the deep waters and stood there, guiding him to swim along....That he swam and not sank, is just one part of the story!

The Palace Courtyard

Ajji tried her very best to stop panting and match her 12 year old grandson's ebullient and unstoppable run across the vast and sprawling courtyards of one of India's magnificent palaces---the Mysore Palace. Amma sat in the garden outside and was generally bored. She and my father had made so many trips to this palace and the city---thanks to the pressures of their son--- that almost every brick there seemed familiar.

"Look here, if you continue to run this way, i am not coming with you to the library", Ajji's terse statement halted my gallop. I needed her help and she knew it. That she had convinced me to stop and keep pace with her brought a triumphant smile on her face. Thanks to the connections that my father had in the Mysore Palace, given his eminence in the bank, we were led to an old and dusty library in the basement of the Palace. It was dingy and grimy and the people there wore a long and disinterested look on their faces. History stood frozen in the many shelves of that old library and that they sat guarding a mortuary didnt make them feel too nice about themselves!

After a few niceties, Ajji got one of the manuscripts out from the shelves. Given as i was to dust allergy, i burst out with an outpour of sneezes. That didnt distract Ajji though. With single-mindedness she turned a few pages and came straight to the chapter titled 'Immadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar' and flipped through it and also found mention of Maharani Lakshmammanni. She was convinced that this was what we were looking for. WHile i looked at her questioningly with my pen and writing pad ready to copy down whatever she dictated, the history of Mysore's Kings seemed to open itself in front of my little eyes, slowly and softly.

It was just a few months back that on one of the Saturday nights Sanjay Khan's magnum opus 'The Sword of Tipu Sultan' had made its presence felt on national television. The serial had kindled enough public interest, many times for all the wrong reasons--a fire accident, an unknown and seldom spoken hero, a Hindi serial on a south indian king...I was in class 6 those days and though i loved stories of Kings and Queens, thanks to Ajji's marathon story-telling sessions, the idea of History as a subject in school was dreadful. It was a humungous exercise for the neurons memorizing dates and wars and blah...who planted how many trees, how the kingdom was divided into X, Y, Z administrative units, which poet wrote which poem under which king----overall a bunch of completely irrelevant information pushed down our little throats. But a serial based on history would be any child's delight and i too sat through with stars in my eyes.

But 3-4 episodes down the line, a strange and comical figure caught my attention. An obsese and slightly retard looking King dressed in gawdy silks and his wife whose eyebrows twitched like some of the vamps in today's K-series serials made me nudge Ajji and my mother about who these characters were. They just stared silently at the TV and said to one another--What a shame! how can they show the Maharaja of Mysore and his wife this way? My dad, a Tamilian and usually inimical to all things Karnataka (!), was also candid enough to say--but wasnt Jayachamaraja Wodeyar a great man, even a road is named after him in Bangalore. While their conversation carried on, i watched the buffoon on television trying to even dance with the court dancer and in comparison to such a weakling was the brave, handsome and young Haidar Ali---who certainly won my mother's admiration:-)

For many days after that, i kept asking Ajji to tell me more about these so-called "great Maharajas" of Mysore. She told me what little she knew but then realised that by then her grandson had become restless. She managed to find out the name of the King and Queen who were shown in the serial (the serial didnt even bother taking their names or when they did, it was plain wrong!) and one fine day said "why dont we go to mysore and see what is written about these people? "
Mysore!!! woow! that would mean a nice vacation and i jumped at the idea...so the very next holiday, we were off to Mysore, to start what began then as a little voyage of discovery !

Consummation of a long journey!

It was the chatter of relatives and guests who had arrived from different cities to Bangalore to participate in an event that evening that woke me up with a thud.

March 4th 2008 seemed like any other day. But it took me a couple of minutes to let the fact sink in that by the time of the day's sunset, my baby would be born...finally ! Its a strange feeling, especially when you have gone through 15 long years of labour pains!!

I meandered through the eventful day, in a zombied state ---a state that has become such a characteristic feature of mine for the last couple of weeks, with all the frenzied activity. By late noon, as i stepped---tense and extremely nervous--- into the magnificent Raj Bhavan located in the corner of one of Bangalore's busiest roads, it suddenly seemed like i had stepped into a time machine that took me back by a few centuries! The awe-inspiring building, with a history of over 150 years to it, as the seat of power of the British Commissioners to the erstwhile Mysore State, can be quite intimidating.

The magnificent banquet hall of this regal building, the retinue of royally dressed handsmen of His Excellency, the arrival of His Excellency (which made me freeze, literally), the presence of blue-blooded royalty in the form of a Princess of the royal dynasty, the smiling faces among the audience, my beaming parents, teachers and friends, the national anthem, the documentary, the release of the book----in the midst of all this drama that was unravelling before me, i struggled hard to keep focus and actually convince myself that what i was beholding was indeed true.

My thoughts couldnt help but take me back in time...images of a young child clasping the hands of his old, petite grandmother and she struggling to keep pace with his exuberant walk, as the odd duo paced the sprawling courtyards of the magnificent Mysore Palace flashed across my mind's eye.......