After reading this book, a reader would feel that Mysore is not just a city but it is indeed a city of palaces and culture.
It was in the summer of 1399 ad that disaster struck a small principality of Southern India. Mahisuru, which later went on to become Mysore, had lost its chieftain and was vulnerable to the machinations of a cunning upstart. Around the same time, two young aspirants left their ancestral home in Dwaraka, Gujarat, and proceeded
Southwards in search of fame. Yaduraya, the elder of the two aspirants, was destiny’s chosen man to lead a valiant attack against the vile upstart, rescue the family in distress, wed the princess and assume the lordship of the place. This event marked the birth of the Wodeyar Dynasty, which was among India’s longest reigning royal houses.
In one of the most definitive accounts of the Wodeyar Dynasty, author Vikram Sampath sketches this long and fascinating regime replete with wars, palace intrigues, romance, valour and deceit. From the genesis in 1399, to the age of glory under Raja Wodeyar, Ranadhira Kanthirava Narasaraja Wodeyar and Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar, to the times of spineless monarchs who let the reigns of the kingdom slip into the hands of the powerful ministers, the book revisits the ups and downs of the Dynasty.
The brief interlude under Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan saw Mysore emerge as a veritable nightmare for the British East India Company. With Tipu’s death in 1799, power was restored to the Wodeyars and they continued to hold sway over the region till the time of India’s Independence. Under progressive rulers and able Dewans, Mysore emerged as a front-runner State of India by the time of Independence on all developmental indices—a strong foundation on which the modern state of Karnataka was built.
Vikram Sampath narrates the history of the Mysore royal family, documenting the victories, struggles, the tumultuous half century when they nearly lost their kingdom, to the glorious days of what we now refer to as the Golden Age of Karnataka.
Bangalore-based historian Dr Vikram Sampath is the author of eight acclaimed books, including Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars, My Name Is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician and Voice of the Veena: S. Balachander, A Biography. His two-volume biography on Veer Savarkar went on to become national best seller and was acclaimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In 2021, Dr Sampath was conferred the honour of being elected as a Fellow of UK’s prestigious Royal Historical Society as one of the few historians from India. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s first Yuva Puraskar in English literature and the ARSC International Award for Excellence in historical research in New York for his book on Gauhar Jaan. The book has also been adapted to theatre as a play Gauhar by Lillette Dubey and is being adapted as a Bollywood film by Ashutosh Gowariker.
Dr Sampath was among the four writers and artists to be selected as a Writer-in-Residence at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 2015. He has established the Archive of IndianMusic, India’s first digital sound archive for vintage recordings and is the Founder-Director of the Bangalore Literature Festival, Indic Thoughts Festival and ARTH-A Culture Fest.
