Vikramarjuna Vijaya

Vikramarjuna Vijaya ("victory of the mighty Arjuna"),also known as Pampa Bharatha is a classic work of the jain poet Pampa. It is an abridged version of the great epic, the Mahabharata of Vyasa. Pampa choose the Arjuna, the central figure of the Pandava Clan, as the hero of his epic. This work differs from Mahabharata in several aspects, one of them being Arjuna crowned the king, [subhadra] the queen, after Kurukshetra war, instead of Yudhishtira, and Draupadi respectively. This work is not an abridged version of Vysa Bharatha. On the other hand it is a recreation of the original in the cultural context of Karnataka and the religious context of Jainism. The relatively less dominant and slghtly Macchiavellian role given to Krishna is a major change. The work acquires a historical significance because of the equation made by the poet between Arjuna and Arikesari his patron king belonging to the Ganga dyanasty. This work was trendsetting in Kannada both in trems of subject and the form.