Across India to acclaim the new British Emperor: biographical vicissitude and tracking movements in the Śrīrāmavarmavijayamahākāvya

Abstract

Among the several Sanskrit works composed in Kerala in the first decades of the 20^th century, the Śrīrāmavarmavijaya offers interesting and relevant insights. This court epic poem, published in 1930, was authored by Kuññan Vāriyar (1872-1942), an official and poet native of Ponnani district, central coastal area of Kerala. As the title suggests, the mahākāvya, in ten sargas, narrates the biography of the rāja of Cochin Rāmavarma XV (1895-1914), from his birth to the festivities for his sixtieth birthday. According to the sources, Kuññan Vāriyar was a personal attendant of the ruler, and so he was well acquainted with the life history of the sovereign. A particularly interesting section of the poem, its sixth canto, describes Rāmavarma XV’s journey by train from Mumbai to Delhi to attend the imperial Durbar of 1903, organised by Lord Curzon (1859-1925) to celebrate the crowning of the King of England Edward VII (1841-1910) as Emperor of India (1901-1910). The paper presents a study on this specific episode as narrated in the Śrīrāmavarmavijaya; the analysis of this textual portion will enlighten the dynamics of depicting the biographical vicissitude of the ruler of Cochin, together with elements that can remind of the basic principles of the travelogue account. Moreover, considerations concerning presumable changes in orientation of the ancient genre of mahākāvya will be offered, taking into account Kuññan Vāriyar’s own specification for his work as navīnakāvya, “modern poem”.