Victory City

Victory City is presented to the reader as a summary of a translation of a fictional 14th-century epic poem written by Pampa Kampana, titled Jayaparajaya. The narrator of the novel occasionally interjects to provide context or notes, but the story is supposedly told from the perspective of Pampa, even if her voice is filtered through that of the modern narrator/translator. The poem becomes an important symbol in the novel. Pampa begins to write the Jayaparajaya after a string of failures, realizing that her dream of a more equal world might not be achievable. She is a powerful being, someone who possesses a gift of enduring youth as well as other magical powers. She builds the city of Bisnaga from seeds and, later, adds defensive walls through her magic. Despite these incredible feats, she rarely gets the respect she knows she deserves. People do not listen to her or acknowledge her ideas. Importantly, they frequently disparage her drive toward equality in favor of tradition. The reactionary beliefs of characters such as Vidyasagar push back against Pampa’s attempt to make women the equal of men, limiting her ability to shape the world as she desires, in spite of her great power. As a result, she occasionally feels weak and powerless. The poem becomes an attempt to reclaim agency over her life and her city. By telling the story of Bisnaga from the perspective of the only person who lived long enough to be alive for the rise and the fall of the city, Pampa hopes to create a historical document of events. Since she is the writer of this history, she has control over how the story is composed. The Jayaparajaya is a symbol of Pampa’s desire for control.

Importantly, the narrative of the Jayaparajaya is told from a woman’s perspective. In the patriarchal culture Pampa wishes to abolish, women are not scribes or storytellers. They are not permitted to be rulers or politicians, as the men in the most powerful positions in society insist that no woman can ever command the respect of a city. In times of need, even Pampa’s close allies (Hukka, Bukka, and Krishna, for example) renege on their promises to install women in positions of power. They rewrite the rules of succession to protect the patriarchal centers of power. As the author of the Jayaparajaya, Pampa tells the history of the city from a woman’s perspective. She may have powers that are not possessed by most women, but her feminine view of the world informs her narration. She diagnoses and describes the methods by which men withhold power from women, showing how the kings of Bisnaga treat her as well as the queens, princesses, and other women she describes in the story. The Jayaparajaya is a symbolic attempt to give voice to a decidedly female perspective on history that, before the poem’s existence, was not believed to be possible.

As the narrator summarizes and interprets the poem through the occasional contemporary comments and notes, the audience is removed from Pampa’s original intent. Her actual words are withheld from the reader, either through the translation of the Sanskrit or through the summarization. The narrator is making explicitly editorial decisions on which parts of Pampa’s narrative can be left out and which must be included. These decisions shape the narrative, as do the narrator’s comments on Pampa’s talents as a storyteller. When the narrator notes that Pampa has failed to mention Aliya’s sons, for example, this is not intended as a critique. It does, however, draw the audience’s attention to the inconsistencies in the actual act of storytelling. The role of the narrator in shaping the audience’s interpretation of the Jayaparajaya symbolizes the extent to which Pampa can never quite deliver her words as intended to her audience.