When the caparisoned elephants led by Abhimanyu begin their stately march from the Mysuru palace to bring the curtains down on the 10-day Dasara festival on Tuesday, it will be a redux of a Vijayanagar tradition well-documented by medieval travelers and modern historians.
Though the empire had long disappeared, the Wadiyars of Mysuru inherited the custom and celebrated it on a grand scale from 1610 CE onwards. The festival fascinated the travellers then as it does now and is among the most well documented cultural practices by writers and artists alike.
Italian traveler Nicolo-Dei-Conti was the first to write about the Navaratri celebrated in the Vijayanagar kingdom which he visited sometime during the reign of Devaraya II (1426-1446 CE) He speaks of a festival ‘’which lasts nine days’’ in an obvious reference to Navaratri.
Persian traveler Abdur Razak also visited Vijayanagar during the rule of Devaraya II and writes about how the people of the country celebrate a ‘’stately and a magnificent festival’’ and describes the presence of ‘’thousands of elephants, tumultuous as the sea, thundering as the clouds’’ were assembled.
Domingo Paes, a traveler from Portugal has also left eye-witness accounts of the ‘’great feast of Bisnaga’’ (for Vijayanagar) and his work is presumed to have been written around 1520-22 CE. That there was animal sacrifice is evident in Paes account when he recounts that ‘’the king witnesses the slaughter of 24 buffaloes and 150 sheeps’’. There is description of the wrestling matches, dancing apart from fireworks at night and Paes narrates the review of the forces by the king in what is believed to be the procession and the marchpast.
Fernano Nuniz, another Portuguese traveler, writes about the festival during the period of Achutaraya (1535-37 CE). In 1610 CE when Raja Wadiyar ascended the throne at Srirangapatana he continued with the Navaratri tradition and ordained that it be celebrated on a grand scale. When the capital of Mysore Kingdom shifted from Srirangapatana to the present city (Mysuru) and the tradition was continued by Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar.
Writing about the origin of Dasara in Mysuru, historian C. Hayavadhana Rao refers to 17th-century literary works and points out that ‘’Kanthirava Narasaraja Vijayam’’ dated to 1648 CE has an elaborate account of the celebrations in 1647 including the narration of beautification of the capital, worship of the deity in the royal household, daily durbar during the 9 days, etc. Hayavadhana Rao’s work also describes the daily rituals that used to take place within the palace during the regime of Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, the European durbar, the procession etc.
The Kalyana Mantapa of the Mysuru Palace has 26 paintings of Dasara procession which were rendered by palace artists like K. Keshavaiah, S.N. Swamy, Y. Nagaraju, S.Shankarraju, S.R. Iyengar, and Subramanya Raju. In some of the Dasara paintings renowned personalities of the age can be identified like musicians like Mysore K Vasudevachar, Veena Seshanna, and Bidaram Krishnappa among others. The Jaganmohan Palace, which was completed in 1861 has Dasara mural depicting the Vijayadashmi procession of the 1850s and are reckoned to be the earliest documentation of Mysuru Dasara.
