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Though the festival is celebrated across India, Dasara in Mysuru is a legacy of the Vijayanagar emperors who ruled between the 14th and 17th centuries.
The grandeur of the Navaratri as celebrated by the Vijayanagar rulers have been described by medieval travellers like Abdur Razzak of Persia, who visited Vijayanagar between 1442 and 1443; Domingo Paes (1520-22) and Fernao Nuniz (1535-37) from Portugal, who have given eyewitness accounts of the ‘great feast of Bisnaga’ (for Vijayanagar). This tradition was inherited by the Wadiyars of Mysuru, and Raja Wadiyar who ascended the throne in 1610 CE at Srirangapatana, ordained that Navaratri be celebrated on a grand scale. After the fall of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the kingdom was restored to the Wadiyars by the British and the capital was shifted from Srirangapatana to Mysuru, where the pageantry continues to be held.
