GANGADEVI
The poet-queen
Gangadevi is the author of Madhura Vijaya (also named Virakamparaya Charita). She was the queen of Kumara Kampana Raya of Vijayanagara who conquered Madurai in 1371 and represented the empire at Kanchipuram. It is speculated that the poem was composed approximately between 1375 and 1400 CE.
What is interesting about this poet is that her royal status gave her access to an education not easily available to all women at the time. She was royalty by birth and by marriage. Her guru was the eminent poet Viswanatha. Her learning resulted in a breadth of vision that enabled her to write poetry of a high standard. Gangadevi was well-read as is obvious from her salutations and eulogies at the beginning of Madhura Vijaya.
Style
Madhura Vijaya is nine cantos long composed in 522 verses written in the Vaidarbhi style in Grantha characters. This class of Sanskrit poetry is considered to be a complete style since it requires all guna (attributes) to be invoked, wherein puns and other rhetorical embellishments are absent and no terse words are used. There are no long compound words and alliterations. Instead, soft and melodious syllables convey the sense of the rasa (emotion, mood). Simple and lucid phrases are characteristic of this style. The expertise of the poet lies in being able to incorporate all the guna, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the rasa to be conveyed, and yet bringing the entire work under the umbrella of one unified theme.