polemics and patronage in sixteenth-century vijayanagara: vyāsatīrtha and the dynamics of hindu...

Polemics and Patronage in Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara: Vyāsatīrtha and the Dynamics ofHindu Sectarian RelationsAuthor(s): Valerie StokerSource: History of Religions, Vol. 51, No. 2 (November 2011), pp. 129-155Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660929 .

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Valerie Stoker PolemiCs And PATronAge in siXT eenTh-CenTUry ViJAyAnAgArA: VyāsATīrThA And The dynAmiCs of hindU seCTAriAn relATions

recent scholarship on the Vijayanagara empire has emphasized its religious diversity, presenting it as a tolerant haven for a variety of religious tradi-tions, including islam, Jainism, and Christianity and highlighting the ecu-menical manner in which its rulers patronized disparate hindu sects. 1 While such scholarship offers an important corrective to older scholarly depictions of Vijayanagara as a self-conscious bastion of monolithic hindu identity, 2 it can still benefit from more nuanced portrayals of relationships between the various religious groups who were active at court. for instance, if one

1 The Vijayanagara empire encompassed most of the south indian peninsula between ca. 1336 and 1565 Ce and was ruled by three successive dynasties, the sangama (1336–1485), the sāluva (1485–1505), and the Tuluva (1505–65). most royal patronage of Jainism took place in the first dynasty or the sangama period. Christianity did not establish a strong presence in Vijayanagara, but in the sixteenth century, Portuguese envoys, soldiers, and masons seem to have resided there on a temporary basis. recent scholarship that documents the Vijayanagara court’s tolerance of and support for multiple religious traditions includes that of Catherine Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Burton stein, Vijayanagara (delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Anila Verghese, Archaeology, Art, and Religion: New Perspectives on Vijayanagara (oxford: ox-ford University Press, 2000), and Religious Traditions at Vijayanagara (delhi: Aiis, 1995).

2 This perspective can be found in the work of krishnaswami Aiyanagar, South India and Her Muhammadan Invaders (london: oxford University Press, 1921); B. A. saletore, Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (madras: B. g. Paul, 1934); nilakanta sastri, History of South India (madras: oxford University Press, 1955). it should be noted that these pioneering works in the field, despite their biases, have provided a significant basis on which further study has been built.



Polemics and Patronage130

narrows one’s focus to the relations between those hindu sects who were receiving patronage from Vijayanagara during the sixteenth century, a more competitive image emerges. Particularly among Brahmin sects espousing different interpretations of Vedānta literature, there seems to have been an increasing polemicism that attests to a robust intellectual rivalry among these religious groups. This intellectual rivalry is related to shifting royal patronage practices that gave certain groups greater access to and influence over temple and courtly resources.

By examining the links between doctrinal disputes and broader socio-political realities, this article seeks to clarify the relationship between hindu sectarian identity and royal patronage practices in one of the most historically significant courtly contexts in precolonial india. it does this by focusing on the life and work of the mādhva Brahmin, Vyāsatīrtha (1460?–1539), who was active at the Vijayanagara court from 1499 until his death in 1539 and who played a leading role in promoting this sectarian rivalry. Vyāsatīrtha’s life story is interesting not only because it is comparatively well documented 3 but also because it reflects a successful effort on the part of a sectarian leader to gain greater prominence for his sect. despite the documented presence of mādhva Brahmins in the empire’s capital city from its inception, 4 there is no monumental or inscriptional evidence to suggest mādhva control of any of the royally funded temples there. As i will demonstrate, Vyāsatīrtha sought to change this through a combination of extensive polemical criticism of his intellectual rivals as well as through selective interaction with those rivals in various popular religious contexts. Thus, Vyāsatīrtha attempted to increase his sect’s prominence in the Vi-jayanagara court by both competing and cooperating with other sectarian groups as the situation warranted.

in terms of his polemics against the doctrines of other schools, Vyāsatīrtha identified two main rivals: first, the smārta Brahmins or the proponents of

3 in addition to Vyāsatīrtha’s own works, there are two biographies, one by his younger contemporary, somanātha, fl. 1525? (Śrī Vyāsayogīcaritam: The Life of Śrī Vyāsarāja, a Champu Kāvya in Sanksrit, with historical introduction in english by Venkoba rao [Banga-lore: mrs. m. srinivasa murti, n.d.]) and the second, the Vyāsa Vijaya, which is attributed to Śrīnivāsatīrtha but is of disputed date and unavailable in print. There are also multiple inscrip-tions, both on copper plates and in the walls of buildings located in Vijayanagara, its environs, and the religious complex at Tirupati-Tirumalai that firmly associate Vyāsatīrtha with specific events, monuments, and iconography. devotional songs in kannada also refer to certain life events and personal associations (see William J. Jackson, Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints [delhi: oxford University Press, 1998]). Vyāsatīrtha’s tomb is located on an island in the Tungabhadra, near the empire’s capital, together with the tombs of eight other prominent mādhva figures.

4 The evidence for the presence of mādhvas in the region of hampi dating to the fourteenth century consists mainly of the samādhis or tombs of mādhva saints found there and the cor-responding guruparampara texts produced by mādhva monasteries that have been used to date these tombs.



History of Religions 131

Advaita or nondualist Vedānta, who managed the temple of Virupākṣa, a form of Śiva and the empire’s tutelary deity; second, the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas, who advocated Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta or Qualified non-dualism and who seem to have controlled all of the royally funded Vaiṣṇava shrines in the capital city. of the three major works Vyāsatīrtha authored, two are po-lemical attacks on these other two schools that seek to buttress the realist epistemology, pluralistic ontology, and distinctive form of Vaiṣṇava devo-tionalism promulgated by his sect’s thirteenth-century founder, madhva. 5 That Vyāsatīrtha’s criticisms of these rival Vedānta systems proved in-cisive is evident in the fact that for the duration of the sixteenth century, and even into the seventeenth, both direct and indirect responses to his works were being composed, not only in south india but as far north as Vāraṇasi. 6 furthermore, literary references to sectarian debates held at the Vijayanagara court suggest that royals were impressed by displays of intellectual acumen. 7 That they meted out patronage accordingly is docu-mented in inscriptions that typically open with praise of the recipient’s knowledge and erudition.

however, if Vyāsatīrtha’s polemics against other sects’ doctrines were an attempt to gain greater prominence for mādhvaism at the Vijayanagara court, they were also part of a much broader strategy. evidently, Vyāsatīrtha was not content merely to demonstrate his sect’s intellectual superiority by composing learned critiques of rival Vedānta schools. he also promoted his sect’s position through other religious activities that, presumably, would have garnered wider attention. These activities included the founding of monasteries, the installation of icons and maṇḍapas (covered porches) at significant temples, the authoring of vernacular devotional songs, and the patronage of public works such as irrigation projects to benefit temple

5 madhva’s form of Vedānta is known alternately as dvaita or “dualist” Vedānta and mādhva Vedānta. The label “dvaita” reflects madhva’s positioning of his philosophy as the antithesis of Advaita. however, his philosophy is not strictly speaking dualist but a realistic pluralism. Vyāsatīrtha composed nine works in all, which include several commentaries on madhva’s works. his three principal works, however, are the Nyāyāmṛta, the Tātparyachandrika, and the Tarkatāṇḍava. The first two are detailed criticisms of Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, and the third challenges certain aspects of nyāya philosophy. This third work is, indirectly, in the service of the same goals as the other two in that it maps out alternative argumentation that supports a dvaita epistemology and metaphysics (Vyāsatīrtha, Nyāyāmṛtam with Advaitasid-dhi of Madhusūdana Sarasvati and Three Commentaries of Nyāyāmṛtam, ed. k. T. Pandurangi [Bangalore: dvaita Vedānta studies and research foundation, 1996], Tātparyacandrikā with the Commentaries of Rāghavendratīrtha and Pāṇḍuraṅgi Keśavacārya, ed. k. T. Pandurangi [Bangalore: dvaita Vedanta studies and research foundation, 2000–2001). Tarkatāṇḍavam, ed. k. T. Pandurangi [Bangalore: dvaita Vendata studies and research foundation, 2003– ]).

6 That Vyāsatīrtha’s fame had spread to Vāraṇasi as early as the 1580s is evident in the fact that the Bengali Advaitin madhusūdana sarasvati, who lived in Vāraṇasi, authored the Advaitasiddhi in c. 1585. This text is almost a line-by-line response to Vyāsatīrtha’s Nyāyāmṛta.

7 somanātha’s biography, The Śrīvyāsayogīcaritam, pp. cxxxv and 60, mentions such de-bates between Vyāsatīrtha and others.




worship. While some of these accomplishments, confirmed by the inscrip-tional and monumental record of Vyāsatīrtha’s life, had themselves been facilitated by royal patronage, they also increased the mādhva sect’s vis-ibility across various social strata. This, in turn, would have consolidated the sect’s standing at court as Vijayanagara royals often utilized religious institutions and their leaders to facilitate relations with the empire’s various communities. 8 moreover, Vyāsatīrtha’s popular religious activities reveal a more complex set of relations between him and his intellectual rivals than the polemical literature admits by illuminating the circumstances under which he collaborated with and mimicked those very rivals.

That Vyāsatīrtha came to wield significant influence in the early Tuluva court, particularly that of krishnadevarāya (r. 1509–1529), who was his most lavish patron, is generally accepted in the scholarly literature. But the precise nature of that influence is hard to characterize. in mādhva scholar-ship, Vyāsatīrtha is spoken of as krishnadevarāya’s personal guru, 9 and, while this has been contested by inscriptional statements, it does seem that Vyāsatīrtha enjoyed some form of privileged relationship with this king. The evidence for this consists of the various donations Vyāsatīrtha received from krishnadevarāya (the details of which i discuss below) as well as a possible reference to Vyāsatīrtha in the account of the Portuguese traveler nunes, who describes krishnadevarāya as receiving daily advice from a Brahmin who “had never married nor touched a woman.” 10 even art histo-rian Anila Verghese, who specializes in religious remains of Vijayanagara and who is generally suspect regarding mādhva claims of Vyāsatīrtha’s preeminence, acknowledges that Vyāsatīrtha was “in a sense the guardian saint of the empire.” 11 What exactly she means by this is unclear, but it remains the case that Vyāsatīrtha shared a position of prominence at court with other sectarian leaders.

it is precisely his relationships with these other sectarian figures that ren-der Vyāsatīrtha’s life and work critical for understanding broader patterns of royal patronage and hindu sectarian interaction in sixteenth-century Vija-yanagara. The sixteenth century is characterized initially by lavish ecumen-

8 There is scholarly consensus on this aspect of royal giving, however there is debate regarding the precise dynamics. see Cynthia Talbot, Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra (oxford: oxford University Press, 2001), 139–44, for an overview of the relevant historiography.

9 somanātha’s biography presents this view; B. n. k. sharma’s The History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature (repr., delhi: motilal Banarsidass, 1981) is a promi-nent modern example. Burton stein, perhaps on the basis of sharma, identifies Vyāsatīrtha as krishnadevarāya’s “preceptor” (Vijayanagara, 102).

10 Quoted in sharma, History of the Dvaita School, 291. This reference in nunes refers to Vyāsatīrtha’s status as a bālasaṁnyāsī or one who has renounced a worldly social identity as a child in order to pursue spiritual knowledge. it is unclear on what grounds B. n. k. sharma and others assume that Vyāsatīrtha was the only Vijayanagara sectarian leader to have undertaken saṁnyāsa as a child.

11 Verghese, Religious Traditions, 114.




ical patronage of different sectarian groups on the part of krishnadevarāya and yet ultimately is marked by a dramatic shift away from Śaivism toward Vaiṣṇavism on the part of krishnadevaraȳa’s successors, most notably rāmarāya. 12 The reasons for abandoning ecumenical patronage practices remain obscure but no doubt are related to the sectarian rivalry that char-acterizes this period. on the one hand, the long established pattern of royal ecumenism seems to have created a certain intimacy across hindu sec-tarian lines. As i will demonstrate, Vyāsatīrtha’s highly detailed yet terse criticisms of other sects suggest an ongoing dialogue among these various groups. such dialogue would have been abetted by the close proximity of the monasteries of these hindu sects in the capital city as well as by the ritual realities of temple and courtly life that required the interaction of sects that held competing Vedānta views. on the other hand, the shift toward an exclusive form of Vaiṣṇavism in the latter part of the Tuluva dynasty sug-gests that the public display of some combination of intellectual prowess, devotional fervor, ritual aptitude, and charitable largesse could influence—-and perhaps even secure—the king’s personal religious preferences at the expense of one’s rivals. 13

Thus, while the established ecumenism of the Vijayanagara rulers gener-ated a certain give-and-take across hindu sectarian lines, that very familiar-ity eventually enabled a competitive striving for sectarian eminence. The shift away from an ecumenical Śaivism and toward a more exclusive affili-ation with Vaiṣṇavism over the course of the sixteenth century indicates that an ability to influence the king’s personal religious preferences could be critical to sectarian success. insofar as Vyāsatīrtha’s life and work exem-plify such success, they illuminate the processes involved.

12 rāmarāya ruled as sadāś iva’s regent from 1542 to 1565. Thus, complete exclusion of Śaivas from royal patronage did not occur until after Vyāsatīrtha’s death in 1539. however, a demonstrable shift in favor of Vaiṣṇavas is evident earlier.

13 Certainly, royal interactions with Brahmins and other religious leaders were influenced by a multitude of factors, among which religious sensibility may not have predominated. moreover, the influence of maṭhādhipatis on royal decision making should not be overstated. in verse 242 of his Amukta-mālyada, in the chapter on statecraft (rājanīti), krishnadevarāya himself advises kings to be parsimonious in handling religious leaders: “if you are partial to learning, and give lands and money away to the learned, mendicants, monks and men with matted hair will become swollen-headed. famines, sickness and infant deaths will increase. Just show devotion to the learned, and if they resent their poverty—don’t be concerned” (V. n. rao, david shulman, and sanjay subrahmanyam, trans., “A new imperial idiom in the six-teenth Century: krishnadevaraya and his Political Theory of Vijayanagara,” in South Indian Horizons: Felicitation Volume for Francois Gro, ed. Jean-luc Chevillard (Pondichéry: institut française de Pondichéry, ecole française d’extrême-orient, 2004), 597–625. yet, while this realpolitik perspective is illuminating, one should not discount entirely the role of religious sentiment in royal funding of religious endeavors. This seems particularly true of shifts in royal patronage practices that favored certain religious communities over others and that cannot easily be explained without reference to personal sentiment.




vyāsatīrtha and the smārta brahmins: dvaita vs. advaita vedānta 14

of the two intellectual traditions that Vyāsatīrtha identifies as rivals, it is with Advaita or non-dualist Vedānta that he takes greater issue. This is in keeping with dvaita Vedānta as conceived by its thirteenth-century founder, madhva (1238–1317), who was a realist and therefore espoused a pluralist ontology in which difference was posited as fundamental to being. madhva described reality in terms of the doctrine of pañcabheda or the fivefold difference between (1) god and souls, (2) souls and matter, (3) god and matter, (4) one soul and another, and (5) one form of matter and another. The form of difference with which the sect was primarily preoccupied was that between the individual human soul trapped in saṁsāra and the ultimate reality of Brahman, whom madhva identified with the hindu god Viṣṇu. This was in stark contrast to the non-dualist Vedānta of Śankara that argues, on the basis of the same canonical literature, that reality is singular and that experience of difference in all forms is illusory.

The most prominent advocates of Śankara’s Advaita philosophy with whom Vyāsatīrtha would have interacted would have been the smārta Brahmins. This Brahmin sect played an important historical role in the Vijayanagara empire. legends of the empire’s founding allude to a special relationship between the empire’s first kings and Vidyāraṇya, the head of the Śankara maṭha at Śringeri in the malnād region of karnataka about 330 km southwest of the capital. early Vijayanagara patronage of that maṭha’s intellectual projects, such as sāyana’s extensive commentary on the Vedas, is well known. furthermore, the smārta Brahmins had at least two monasteries in or near the empire’s capital city, 15 one of which was attached to the largest and, for two centuries, the most significant royal temple for the Vijayanagara court, the Virupākṣa mandir. A form of Śiva, Virupākṣa was the tutelary deity of the empire for almost its entire duration, even during the first part of the sixteenth-century Tuluva dynasty, when the personal devotional preferences of the emperors had shifted toward Vaiṣṇavism. Virupākṣa’s blessings and protection continued to be sought on most inscriptions in the early Tuluva period.

14 intellectual conflicts among Brahmin sects at Vijayanagara tended to revolve around the interpretation of Vedānta texts and related issues of epistemology, ontology, and soteriology. These conflicts did not typically engage the issue of whose god was superior. Thus, rivalry between the mādhvas and the smārtas did not involve pitting Viṣṇu against Śiva as much as it did, say, saguṇa brahman against nirguṇa brahman. however, devotional preferences did influence sectarian relations, as will be demonstrated below.

15 The older one, known as Cintāmaṇi maṭha, is located at Anegondi, directly across the Tungabhadra from Vijayanagara. The other smārta maṭha is of uncertain origin but is referred to in a 1515 inscription (dating from krishnadevarāya’s reign) when a monk from the Śṛṇgeri maṭha comes to stay there during a visit to the city.




indeed, at the time of his coronation, krishnadevarāya made his very first construction effort in the capital city by adding a maṇḍapa (a covered porch) and a gopuram (a tower above an entryway) to the Virupākṣa temple, 16 and he continued to patronize smārta monasteries throughout his reign. 17 furthermore, as Verghese has demonstrated, when this king built the first krishna temple in the capital city in 1515, to house the Bālakrishna icon that he captured after his victorious conquest of Udayagiri, about 350 kilometers east of the capital, he seems to have sought the protection and blessings of Virupākṣa for what was to be a new cult in the city. he had an image of a nobleman (possibly himself) worshipping a Śivalingam prominently displayed in the porch outside the shrine’s inner sanctum. it is situated just opposite a similar image of a nobleman worshipping Bālakrishna’s image. Verghese argues that krishnadevarāya asserted “through these two reliefs, that despite his patronage of krishna and the promotion of this cult in the capital, he had no intention of relinquishing his links with Virupākṣa.” 18

Thus, the smārta Brahmins, affiliated with the Virupākṣa temple, contin-ued to wield influence during Vyāsatīrtha’s lifetime, although that influence would soon begin to wane. Unfortunately, we do not have much informa-tion regarding Vyāsatīrtha’s daily interactions with the smārtas. Because smārtas and mādhvas did not share a devotional orientation that might have conduced to extended use of the same temples and, therefore, a common inscriptional record, the documentation of Vyāsatīrtha’s relationship with the smārtas consists primarily of his polemics against them. 19 This is nota-bly different from the documentation of his relations with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas (to be discussed in the next section), which attests to collaboration between Vyāsatīrtha and this group on a range of religious activities, even as he criti-cizes their doctrinal positions. however, despite limited monumental and inscriptional evidence attesting to specific interactions between Vyāsatīrtha and the smārtas, a close reading of his anti-Advaita polemics, examined in light of the broader historical record, reveals some significant features of his relationship to this sect.

from looking at Vyāsatīrtha’s polemics against Advaita, we learn not only that he was very familiar with Advaita philosophy but that he even

16 Verghese, Archaeology, Art, and Religion, 77.17 krishnadevarāya also gave grants of villages to the Śankarachārya maṭha at kanchi in

1529 (Epigraphia Indica, vol. 14 [Calcutta and new delhi: Archeological survey of india, 1915–16], 168–75, cited in Verghese, Religions Traditions, 149) .

18 Verghese, Archaeology, Art, and Religion, 56.19 An important exception may be the kamalapur copper plates from 1526 (Epigraphia

Indica, vol. 31 [Calcutta and new delhi: Archeological survey of india, 1955–56], no. 21), which present Vyāsatīrtha as redistributing a sizeable land grant conferred upon him by krishnadevarāya among 308 individual householders and ascetics. several of the recipients have Śaiva Brahmin names and therefore may be smārta in affiliation.




co-opts historically Advaita terminology in an effort to demonstrate the superior suitability of certain Advaita concepts within his dvaita or “dual-ist” Vedānta framework. for instance, Vyāsatīrtha equates the historically Advaita term jīvanmukti, or “liberation while embodied,” with madhva’s doctrine of aparokṣa jñāna, or “direct and immediate knowledge of god.” 20 Vyāsatīrtha’s reasons for making this equation between the dvaita doctrine of aparokṣa jñāna and the Advaita term jīvanmukti may stem from the fact that jīvanmukti is one of the more sociopolitically significant doctrines of the Advaita Vedānta school. By regarding many of their monastic heads or maṭhādhipatis as having achieved this state, smārtas implicitly claimed a particularly authoritative spiritual status for their religious leaders. in a paradoxical way, the sect extended its worldly influence through the pre-sumed liberation of their leader from this world. 21 But if jīvanmukti made sense for the social life of Advaita doctrines, it was still a challenge to defend philosophically, given Advaita’s monist ontology and idealist epis-temology, wherein difference of any kind is part of an illusion rooted in ignorance. Vyāsatīrtha exploits these difficulties in chapter 4 of one of his most polemical texts, the Nyāyāmṛta or The Nectar of Logic. 22

20 much of the scholarly literature on dvaita credits Vyāsatīrtha with introducing the use of this term in dvaita (daniel sheridan, “direct knowledge of god and living liberation in the religious Thought of madhva,” in Living Liberation in Hindu Thought, ed. Andrew o. fort and Patricia mumme [Albany, ny: sUny Press, 1996]; B. n. k. sharma, Philosophy of Śrī Madhvācārya [delhi: motilal Banarsidass, 1962], 440). however, roque mesquita’s recent work on this concept (The Concept of Liberation While Still Alive in the Philosophy of Madhva [delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2007] maintains that madhva himself was amenable to this term and utilized it on occasion. mesquita’s evidence for this consists primarily of two quotations in madhva’s works from unknown sources, which mesquita believes madhva authored himself (9ff.). mesquita’s analysis of madhva’s commentary on these quotes as well as madhva’s discussion of liberation is persuasive in showing that madhva made some equation between his two-stage view of mokṣa and Advaita Vedānta’s jīvanmukti concept. however, based on mesquita’s discussion, my own assessment is that madhva did not use the term jīvanmukti frequently and generally preferred to present his theory of mokṣa in terminology that would not be confused with that of Advaita.

21 it is unlikely that smārtas made a conscious decision to view their leaders in this way so as to achieve specific worldly ends. however, the doctrine of jīvanmukti helped to qualify gurus to teach about the experience to others and thereby establish their religious authority. As Patricia mumme notes, Śankara himself says as much: “Commenting on Chandogya Upaniṣad 6.14.2, Śankara states that one of the reasons a state of living liberation must be affirmed is the need for authoritative gurus and teachers. his point is compelling: if there is no one who has attained liberation in this life, then who would be qualified to act as a guru, teacher, or example worthy of emulation for those who are still bound? The various traditions that aim at liberation would be reduced to the blind leading the blind.” she also notes: “Jīvanmukti is a doctrinal concept whose practical importance is in authorizing founding teachers and gurus” (fort and mumme, Living Liberation, 263). see also fort, Jīvanmukti, 40–41, on the role this doctrine plays in qualifying teachers.

22 Vyāsatīrtha’s presentation in this text assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of his audience of his opponents’ doctrines, which he does not often explain prior to refuting. This probably reflects the dialogic context in which this text was produced.




in Vyāsatīrtha’s view, 23 the Advaitin’s biggest difficulty is explaining how embodiment on the part of an enlightened being can continue given that the content of that enlightenment exposes both the fundamental one-ness of all being as well as the illusory nature of one’s corporeal and spiri-tual individuality. Aware of this difficulty, two principal ways to address this problem were provided in Advaita literature, and Vyāsatīrtha attacks both of them in chapter 4 of his Nyāyāmṛta.

The first is the theory of saṁskāra or the notion that the products of igno-rance are “impressions” that will continue for a while even after ignorance itself has been destroyed. 24 Vyāsatīrtha briefly summarizes this theory in his presentation of the Advaita perspective:

[The Advaitin] says, “The one who is liberated while embodied is he who has his ignorance destroyed through knowledge of true reality and yet who still sees the manifestation of the body, etc. And the body, etc. do not cease to exist immediately upon the destruction of ignorance through knowledge of true reality. This is because the continuation of that [body, etc.] is due to the saṁskāra of ignorance which is like the trembling produced by fear [of a snake that one subsequently realizes is a rope] and like a potter’s wheel that continues to spin [even after the potter has stopped spinning it]. 25

These analogies of the potter’s wheel and the rope misapprehended as a snake were common Advaita attempts to explain the nature of the saṁskāra’s existence and its relationship to the ignorance that has been destroyed on the part of the jīvanmukta. But these analogies were met by realist thinkers with the objection that if a saṁskāra were truly analogous to either of these examples, it must have either an action or a cognition as its cause. ignorance, the putative cause of the saṁskāra, is neither an action nor a cognition. furthermore, the ignorance has been destroyed. Thus, identify-ing the cause of the saṁskāra remains problematic. To deal with this issue, the thirteenth-century Advaitin Prakāśātman came up with a third analogy in which the saṁskāra left by ignorance is likened to the smell of a flower

23 it is important to note that Vyāsatīrtha often treats his particular interpretation of his opponents’ positions. his opponents, for more than a century, articulated counterarguments, some of which pointed out Vyāsatīrtha’s misrepresentation of their ideas. however, as men-tioned above, the fact that Vyāsatīrtha’s polemics elicited such a protracted and detailed response from his intellectual rivals attests to the cogency of his critique.

24 it was mandana miśra (fl. 690 Ce), a rough contemporary of Śankara, who first used the idea of saṃskāra to differentiate between prārabdha karma, which continues after liberating knowledge has been acquired, and avidyā or ignorance, which ceases to exist (Andrew o. fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta [Albany, ny: sUny Press, 1998], 47ff.).

25 “yaccocyate tattvasākṣātkāreṇa naṣṭāvidyo ’nuvṛttadehādipratibhāsaśca jīvanmuktaḥ| na ca tattvajñānādavidyānāśe sadyaḥ śarīrādinivarteteti vācyam| cakrabhramaṇavad bhayakaṁpā-diccāvidyāsaṁskārādapi tadanuvṛtteḥ|” (Vyāsatīrtha, Nyāyāmṛtam, vol. 3, 695).




that lingers in a box that once contained the flower; even after the flower has been removed, the box will continue to smell. 26 in the same way, according to Advaita, even after ignorance has been destroyed, the saṁskāra of igno-rance lingers on. furthermore, the Advaitin maintains that there is no rela-tionship of material causality between ignorance and the saṁskāra; rather, the relationship is one of invariable concomitance between the destruction of ignorance and the saṁskāra. Vyāsatīrtha summarizes his understanding of these aspects of Advaita thought as follows:

And it is not the case that a saṁskāra is only made by an action or a cognition, because of the example of the smell of a flower lingering in the box even after the flower itself has been removed. And because of the following inference: “The destruction which is under dispute is [the destruction of ignorance which], like the destruction of knowledge, is invariably concomitant with a saṁskāra because this is the nature of destruction, except in the case of the destruction of a saṁskāra [in which case there is no invariable concomitance with another saṁskāra]. 27 A saṁskāra is an effect that is without a material cause just like destruction [is without a material cause]. 28

To further address the issue of how the saṁskāra of ignorance can continue once ignorance has been destroyed, the Advaitin attempts to iden-tify the locus of the saṁskāra. Clearly, the saṁskāra cannot be located in ignorance because, according to Advaita, ignorance has been destroyed in the state of jīvanmukti. Thus, the Advaitin maintains that the saṁskāra must be located in the pure self, which is, in fact, the only truly existing reality in Advaita ontology: 29 “like ignorance, [the saṁskāra’s] locus is the pure self. [The saṁskāra therefore] need not depend upon ignorance for its locus.” 30 of course, the question remains regarding how the pure self then rids itself of this saṁskāra, and for this, the Advaitin, in Vyāsatīrtha’s presentation, offers the explanation that there is some ongoing realization of the true nature of reality that eventually results in total liberation from embodiment: “The saṁskāra ceases [to exist] through the repeated realiza-tion of the nature of reality.” 31

26 fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 10.27 The Advaitin is careful to maintain that the destruction of an impression will not invari-

ably give rise to another impression precisely because this would mean that the achievement of final liberation would never take place.

28 “na ca kriyājñānayoreva saṁskāraḥ, niḥsāritapuṣpāyāṁ tatpuṭikāyāṁ puṣpavāsanādar-śanāt| vimato nāśaḥ saṁskāravyāptaḥ, saṁskāranāśānyatve sati nāśatvāt, jñānanāśava d-ityanumānācca| saṁskāraḥ kāryo ’pi dhvaṁsa iva nirupādānaḥ|” (ibid.).

29 see fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 61, for a discussion of the saṁskāra’s locus according to Prakāśātman.

30 “Avidyeva ca śuddhātmāśrita iti nāvidyāpekṣaḥ|” (ibid.).31 “saṁskāranivṛttiśca ’vṛttāttattvasākṣātkārāt|” (ibid.).




having presented his synopsized version of Advaita’s saṁskāra theory of jīvanmukti along with the system’s responses to various objections, Vyāsatīrtha then analyzes and refutes this theory. As is typical of Vyāsa-tīrtha’s presentation in the Nyāyāmṛta, he employs a reductio ad absurdum technique, in which the opponent’s faulty premises are taken to their equally faulty but logically unavoidable conclusions. simultaneously, Vyāsatīrtha contrasts Advaita’s idealist epistemology with dvaita’s realism and shows his system to great advantage. Vyāsatīrtha begins by arguing against the notion that a saṁskāra can be produced in the absence of a material cause: “now we say that as far as the saṁskāra [theory of jīvanmukti] goes, that is untenable. Because ignorance would have to continue as a material cause for each of the following: 1. the saṁskāra, 2. the body, etc., and 3. the prārabdha karma [or the karma that is currently being worked off and] that is the cause of [the body, etc.]. All of these are positive products [i.e., produced by material causes] and superimposed realities [onto the ultimate singular reality of Brahman].” 32

in this manner, Vyāsatīrtha is arguing that because all of these things, which the Advaitins themselves see as continuing in the state of jīvanmukti, are positive products and superimposed realities, they are thus of a differ-ent order of being than “destruction,” which perhaps may have no material cause. furthermore, he goes on to argue that it is illegitimate to claim that the saṁskāra produced by a mistaken cognition of reality, along the lines of misapprehending a rope for a snake, is real but its material cause is not ajñāna or ignorance. 33 in dvaita thought, for the saṁskāra to be real, it must have a material cause and that material cause, would be the mistaken cognition. When a mistaken cognition occurs in dvaita, an actual misap-prehension has taken place, and thus, it might produce some actual results. But in Advaita, that mistaken cognition itself is unreal, and thus, you cannot have a real saṁskāra produced from it.

Vyāsatīrtha also argues against the Advaita idea that the state of jīvanmukti is temporary and eventually comes to an end after repeated awareness of reality’s true nature as nondual. here, Vyāsatīrtha maintains that, given the singular nature of reality in Advaita, it does not make sense to argue that repeated knowledge of it will reveal new information. if ignorance alone was what obstructed insight into the true nature of reality, and if ignorance has been removed, there should be the experience of complete liberation and not the halfway measure that is jīvanmukti. furthermore, if the saṁskāra is not the same as ignorance, which has been destroyed, and if ignorance was what was blocking full insight into the nature of reality

32 “Atra brūmaḥ na tāvatsaṁskārapakṣo yuktaḥ| bhāvakāryamadhyastaṃ saṁskāraṃ dehādikaṃ taddhetuprārabdhakarmādikaṃ ca pratyupādānatvenājñānānuvṛttyāpātāt|” (ibid.).

33 sarpādibhramasaṁskārastu satyo na tvajñānopādānakaḥ| (ibid., 695–96).




as nondual, the saṁskāra cannot now be identified as the factor obstruct-ing complete knowledge of reality: “furthermore, it is not the case that the cessation of superimposed realities which did not take place upon the initial realization of the true nature of reality would occur with subsequent knowl-edge [of that same reality]. [This is because] even though there is on-going perception [of that reality], [such perception] has no additional content. And because of the fact that, since the cover called ‘ignorance’ no longer exists, there should then be instantaneous manifestation of the highest bliss for the jīvanmukta. you yourself have said that the saṁskāra is not a cover [obscuring knowledge of reality].” 34

Vyāsatīrtha also rejects the Advaitin’s argument that, even though intel-lectually one may be aware that plural reality is an illusion superimposed onto the singular reality of Brahman, one may still perceive that plural real-ity because there is some lingering defect in one’s cognition. The analogy used for this in Advaita thought beginning with Śankara is that of look-ing at the moon while applying some pressure to one’s eyelid with one’s finger, thereby creating the illusion of two moons. 35 Just as one knows intellectually there is only one moon and yet sees two, one may know that plural reality is false and yet still perceive its existence. Vyāsatīrtha argues against this reasoning as follows: “The following view has been rejected, namely, ‘that [the state of jīvanmukti] is like when you accept something contrary to known reality because there is some defect [in cognition] as in the example of seeing two moons [when you apply pressure to your eyelid with your finger] even though you know that there is only one moon.’ in this case [of jīvanmukti], [unlike] in that [example], there is no defect which is not removed by true knowledge of reality.” 36 Vyāsatīrtha is conceding that the pressure applied to one’s eyelid in the example is not destroyed by the knowledge that there is only one moon; indeed, such pressure may continue to cause the illusion of two moons to coexist with the knowledge that there is only one. however, Vyāsatīrtha is also arguing that, according to Advaita, once knowledge of Brahman has been attained, all external factors and defects of cognition must cease to exist because they have been revealed to be inultimate. Thus, there can be no factor to explain the ongoing cognition of reality as plural once that reality has been revealed to be singular.

The second theory that Advaitins such as sarvajñātman (9th–10th cen-tury) and Vimuktātman (10th–11th century) offered to explain the state of jīvanmukti in their system was to argue that there was a leśa or a portion of

34 “Pūrvasākṣātkārānivṛttasyādhyastasya tadanadhikaviṣayeṇāvṛttenāpyattareṇa jñānena nivṛttyadarṣanācca| jīvanmuktasyāvidyāvaraṇābhāvena tadā niratiśayānandasphūrtyāpātācca| saṁskārastu nāvaraṇamiti tvayaivoktam|” (ibid., 696).

35 fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 39.36 “etena tattve jñāte ’pi dvicandrādivaddoṣād bādhitānuvṛttiriti nirastam, tatrevātra

tattvajñānānivartyadoṣābhāvāt” (ibid.).




ignorance that remained even after realization of Brahman’s nondual and featureless nature. 37 This portion temporarily obstructs complete liberation on the part of the jīvanmukta. Vyāsatīrtha finds this idea an equally unac-ceptable means of explaining how an individual who has grasped the truth of reality’s non-dual nature continues to experience plurality: “And as for the notion that [the world, body, etc. persist in jīvanmukti] because there is a leśa, a portion [of ignorance that remains], that too is untenable because ignorance is without parts. for the same reason, it also will not work to say that ignorance remains for some time as according to the analogy of the burnt cloth because you cannot apply the analogy of the burnt cloth to that which is without parts.” 38

Advaita often used the burnt cloth analogy to explain the state of jīvanmukti. 39 The burnt cloth, while destroyed by fire and subject to im-minent disappearance, retains its basic outline and remains visible for some time. But Vyāsatīrtha contests the validity of this analogy on the grounds that ignorance in Advaita thought is not like a cloth; it is both inultimate (and therefore nonreal) and partless. indeed, Vyāsatīrtha goes on to say that the leśa theory is also defective “because whatever persists by virtue of the fact that it is not destroyed by knowledge must be considered as ultimately real.” 40 in other words, the leśa of ignorance, because it is not destroyed upon realization of the truth of nondualism would itself have to be an ulti-mate reality, and clearly, this is something the Advaitin would not accept.

Aware of these difficulties with the leśa concept, some Advaitin thinkers such as Citsukha (thirteenth century) modified the leśa’s definition, pre-senting it as a “form” of ignorance rather than as a part. 41 Vyāsatīrtha para-phrases his understanding of this view as follows:

The leśa is to be thought of as an ākāra or a “form.” According to Śruti statements such as “indromāyābhir . . .” 42 etc., ignorance has many forms [and thus,] even though there has been the cessation of the form [of ignorance] that causes the mis-taken cognition that the material world is absolutely real, the form [of ignorance] that causes the appearance of the body, etc. continues. And there is the continuation [of the appearance of the body, etc.] even though the knowledge of true reality which has the capacity to obstruct it is there because prārabdha karma [karma that is in the process of being worked off] acts as an obstructor of that knowledge. . . . The

37 fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 53–55.38 “leśapakṣe ’pi na tāvalleśo ’vayavaḥ, ajñānasya niravayavatvāt etenāvidyaiva

dagdhapaṭanyāyena kiṃcitkālaṃ tiṣṭhāti nirastam| niravayave dagdhapaṭanyāyāsambhavāt|” (ibid.).

39 fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 10.40 “Anuvṛttasya jñānānivartyatvena sattvāpātācca|” (ibid.).41 fort, Jīvanmukti in Transformation, 62ff.42 This is the pratīka for Ṛgveda 6.47.18c (indro māyābhiḥ pururūpa īyate), which is quoted

in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.5.19c. it implies that māyā or illusion is plural.




continuation of the form, despite the non-existence of the form-holder is legitimate because it is like the jāti or class that continues even if the individual members [of that jāti] no longer exist. 43

Vyāsatīrtha’s criticism of the leśa theory offers three basic alternatives to conceptualizing the leśa as a form of ignorance and then proceeds to show the conceptual flaws inherent to each: “in case [the leśa is thought of as an ākāra, a form of ignorance], is the ākāra of the nature of a peculiar power [of ignorance?] or is it a specific modification [of ignorance] like an earring that is made of gold [is a modification of gold]? or is it an additional indi-vidual instance of ignorance? [i.e., you have destroyed one manifestation of ignorance, only to have it replaced by a completely new manifestation of ignorance].” 44

Vyāsatīrtha then argues that “it is neither the first nor the second option [i.e., that the ākāra of ignorance is a peculiar power or a modified form of ignorance] because if either of those things acts as a material cause of the mistaken cognition of the body, etc. then [you must allow that] there is the continued existence of ignorance [which is supposed to have been destroyed].” 45 The idea here is that to describe the leśa in either of these ways does nothing to circumvent the basic difficulty that ignorance, ac-cording to Advaita, has been destroyed in the state of jīvanmukti. in this sense, the saṁskāra theory works a bit better because the Advaitin can claim that the saṁskāra is different from ignorance and persists even after ignorance is destroyed. The conception of leśa as a form of ignorance pre-sumes ignorance’s abiding existence. But this cannot be the case because, as Vyāsatīrtha says, “in terms of either of [these ways of understanding the leśa], which is different from the ātman and which is vulnerable to being destroyed by knowledge [of reality as nondual] and which [must be regarded] either as ignorance itself or as a product of ignorance, it is not legitimate for the leśa to continue if ignorance has truly ceased to exist.” 46

Vyāsatīrtha further argues that the leśa can be viewed neither as a prop-erty of ignorance nor as a modified form of ignorance. if it were the former, the leśa could not then act as a material cause, and if it were the latter, it is not clear how a form of a nonexistent thing could continue to exist: “in the

43 “Atha matam leśo nāmā ’kāraḥ| indro māyābhir ityādiśrutyā avidyāyā anekākāratvena prapañce paramārthasattvādibhramahetvākāranivṛttāvapi dehādyaparokṣapratibhāsahetvākāro ’nuvartate| virodhini tattvajñāne satyapi tadanuvṛttiścārabdhakarmabhir jñānapratibandhāt| karmānuvṛttiśca taddhetvajñānaleśānuvṛtteḥ| [. . .] ākārinivṛttāvapyākārasyānuvṛttirvyaktini-vṛttāvapi jāteriva yukteti|” (Vyāsatīrtha, Nyāyāmṛtam, 696).

44 “Tatra ’kāro jātiśaktyādirūpo dharmo vā? svarṇasya kuṇḍalādirivāvasthā viśeṣo vā? Ajñānavyaktyantaram vā?” (ibid.).

45 “nādyadvitīyau, tayordehādibhramopādānatve ’vidyātvāpātāt|” (ibid.).46 “ātmānyatvena jñānanivartyatvena ca tayor avidyātatkāryayoranyataratvāvaśyambh

āve-nājñāne nivṛtte sthityayogācca|” (ibid.).




case of viewing the leśa as a property of ignorance, it cannot be a material cause [of the cognition of the body, etc. in jīvanmukti] and it is also not legitimate for a form of something to continue in the absence of the form’s possessor.” 47

Vyāsatīrtha also rejects the third option, wherein the leśa is considered as an additional instance of ignorance that replaces the one that has been destroyed, “because it is not suitable within a perspective which says that ignorance is singular.” 48 he also argues against the idea that there can be multiple instances of that singular ignorance on the following grounds:

even from the point of view of difference [within ignorance], is it the case that, after that previous ignorance, there is another type of ignorance that has additional objects of the senses? or not? it’s not the former because, in the case of a nirviśeṣa or attributeless reality, it is not proper to say that [ignorance has additional content]. But it is also not the latter view [that whatever was the content of the previous form of ignorance is going to be the same as this form ] because, in an earlier chapter of the Nyāyāmṛta, the falsity of the following idea was established: “even when there is only one object of knowledge, there can be as many false understandings of it as there can be insights into it.” 49

Continuing with the theme that the leśa of ignorance might be concep-tualized as something that manifests itself in discreet multiple instances over time, Vyāsatīrtha goes on to state that the Advaitins cannot maintain that an initial insight into reality as nondual occurs, but full insight into it as nondual occurs later because the content of the insight cannot possibly have changed: “And it is not legitimate to say that ignorance is caused by a mistaken cognition of reality’s true nature even in the state of jīvanmukti because it is not legitimate to argue that, even though previously there was complete knowledge of the object, the final apprehension of [reality’s na-ture] occurs later.” 50

finally, Vyāsatīrtha argues against the idea that prārabdha karma or karma that is in the process of being worked off by the jīvanmukta can be used to explain the state of jīvanmukti because its relationship to the leśa doctrine is one of mutual dependence. By invoking prārabdha karma, the Advaitin is attempting to explain the persistence of the leśa of ignorance with reference to an individual’s karma, but he is also relying on the abiding existence of the leśa as a form of ignorance to account for the continued

47 “dharme upādānatvasyāvasthāyāṃ cāvasthāvantaṃ vinā sthiterayogācca|” (ibid.).48 “na tṛtīyaḥ, ajñānaikyapakṣe tadayogāt|” (ibid.).49 “Tadbhedapakṣe ’pi vyaktyantaraṁ pūrvājñānādadhikaviṣayam? na vā? nādyaḥ,

nirviśeṣe tadayogāt| nāntyaḥ, ekasminnapi viṣaye yāvanti jñānāni tāvantyajñānānīti matasya pratikarmavyavasthābhange dūṣitatvāt|” (ibid.).

50 “Caramasākṣātkārānyūnaviṣayasākṣātkārasya pūrvamapi satve paścādiva jīvan-muktāvapi tadajñānahetukādhyāsāyogācca|” (ibid., 696–97).




experience of karma on the part of the jīvanmukta: “if you establish the leśa’s existence with reference to the continued working off of karma and yet you also establish the continuation [of karma] with reference to the existence of the leśa as something that obstructs complete knowledge, there would be the flaw of mutual dependence.” 51

having criticized to his satisfaction the two possible explanations for the continued experience of embodiment and plurality on the part of the jīvanmukta, Vyāsatīrtha comes out and declares that jīvanmukti is simply not an acceptable doctrine within Advaita thought. however, he also argues that jīvanmukti is perfectly consistent with dvaita:

Therefore, in the opponent’s system of thought, because everything is the product of illusion and because illusion is destroyed by knowledge, jīvanmukti is not possible. But for us, in the case of the individual who has achieved aparokṣa jñāna or direct and immediate knowledge of god, jīvanmukti is the continuation of saṁsāra due to the working off of prārabdha karma, absent the grace of god that is bestowed on the liberated one whose goal was [achieving that grace], because devotion to Brahman has not yet reached its highest peak which would enable one to obtain the highest bliss of which one is capable. But when [god’s] grace does transpire, mukti has the nature of the complete cessation of suffering and the manifestation of bliss of a higher or lower caliber, depending upon one’s innate nature. 52

in fact, the founder of mādhva Vedānta, madhva, did not typically use the term jīvanmukti to describe his two-stage view of mokṣa. instead, ma-dhva used the term, cited by Vyāsatīrtha in the preceding quote, aparokṣa jñāna, which translates to “direct and immediate knowledge of god.” how-ever, as both daniel sheridan and roque mesquita have argued, madhva’s aparokṣa jñāna idea presents liberation as a two-stage process, beginning in embodied saṁsāric existence and completed when one’s soul is irrevers-ibly released from embodiment. in the first stage, insight into the divine-human relationship is gained and devotion is practiced, resulting in a direct and immediate vision of god’s multifaceted nature (i.e., aparokṣa jñāna). Because of prārabdha karma, the jīva remains in saṁsāra until this al-ready manifesting karma is spent. The second stage or final liberation from saṁsāric existence is brought about through god’s grace when the soul is permanently released from embodiment. 53 B. n. k. sharma also describes

51 “sthite leśe karmānuvṛttistadauvṛttau ca jñānasya pratibandhena leśasthitirityanyo-nyāśrayācca|” (ibid., 696).

52 “Asmākam tu aparokṣajñānino ’pi svayogyaparamānandahetuparamakāṣṭhāpannabhakty-abhāve tat sādhyasya mocakasyeśvaraprasādasyābhāvena prārabdhakarmaṇā saṁsārānuvṛttyā jīvanmuktiḥ| bhāve tu prasādasyāpi bhāvena niḥśeṣaduḥkhanivṛttiviśiṣṭasvatonīcoccabhāvā- pann asvarūpānandāvirbhāvarūpāmuktiryukteti||” (ibid., 697).

53 sheridan, “direct knowledge of god.”




madhva’s notion of aparokṣa jñāna as the “the fulfillment and culmination of all the sādhanas” and as “the penultimate state of final release.” 54

Thus, liberation in dvaita Vedānta always was a two-stage process, and madhva’s aparokṣa jñāna or “the direct and immediate knowledge of god is functionally equivalent to Advaita Vedānta’s teaching of jīvanmukti.” 55 yet, while madhva may have occasionally made this equation himself, Vyāsatīrtha’s Nyāyāmṛta advances the cause of treating the terms aparokṣa jñāna and jīvanmukti interchangeably. in doing so, he attests to the utility of Advaita categories in his context. simultaneously, what Vyāsatīrtha does, if not with complete finality then at least with an impressive display of virtu-osity, is to problematize the use of the term jīvanmukti in Advaita Vedānta so as to lay exclusive claim to it on the part of the dvaita system. he does this by highlighting all those aspects of dvaita thought that make it the polar opposite of Advaita: its realism, its hierarchical relationship between the soul and Brahman, its belief that Brahman is qualified by all known at-tributes, and its emphasis on devotionalism and grace as the essential means to mokṣa. in this manner, Vyāsatīrtha coopts a sociopolitically significant doctrine away from a rival school and marshals it to his sectarian cause.

vyāsatīrtha and the śrī vaiṣṆavas: dvaita vs. viśiṣṭādvaita

in his polemical works, Vyāsatīrtha also identifies the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas as in-tellectual rivals. This sect was comprised of northern and southern fac-tions, subscribing to somewhat different interpretations of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta or Qualified non-dualism articulated by the eleventh-century Tamil Brahmin, rāmānuja and by earlier Tamil poet saints, the ālvārs (third to ninth centuries). Compared to the documentation of Vyāsatīrtha’s rela-tions with the smārtas, which consists primarily of his polemics against them, the documentation of his relations with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas is more multifaceted, precisely because the two sects have a lot more in common. doctrinally, both mādhvas and Śrī Vaiṣṇavas identify Brahman with Viṣṇu and conceptualize the ultimate reality as possessing attributes. Both com-munities believe that liberation from saṁsāra requires some form of ac-knowledgment of Viṣṇu’s supremacy over the individual human soul. Both sects assert the actual existence of the physical world and the reality of saṁsāra. finally, both argue that souls retain some distinct identity in the state of mokṣa rather than losing all individuality as in Śankara’s Advaita.

These doctrinal similarities had practical implications in that both mādhvas and Śrī Vaiṣṇavas worshipped in temples dedicated to Viṣṇu’s various forms. While it seems that the two groups shared these religious

54 sharma, Philosophy of Śrī Madhvācārya, 426.55 sheridan, “direct knowledge of god,” 91.




spaces, there is strong evidence to suggest the dominance of Śrī Vaiṣṇavas in temple life at the sixteenth-century Vijayanagara court. evidence also suggests that Vyāsatīrtha worked to gain a firmer foothold for mādhva Brahmins in these shrines. Thus, his polemical critique of Viśiṣṭādvaita doctrines arguably reflects his competition with this sect for access to the redistribution of wealth and honors that took place in these royally funded temples. 56

indeed, if smārta influence was on the wane beginning with the reign of sāluva narasiṁha (r. 1485–91) and continuing through the subsequent rul-ers of the Tuluva dynasty, Śrī Vaiṣṇavism rose to a position of prominence in almost direct proportion. 57 Beginning during the reign of krishnadevarāya, Virupākṣa’s status as the tutelary deity of the empire is gradually compro-mised, first by the addition of Viṭhala (a form of Viṣṇu) as a witness to the arrangements recorded in various inscriptions and ultimately by the elimination of Virupākṣa from these records during the reign of rāmarāya, sadāśiva’s regent (1542–65). Correspondingly, the main temple to Viṭhala in the capital city of Vijayanagara became the hub of religious activity in the sixteenth century. many new maṇḍapas, gopurams, colonnades, and subsidiary shrines were built within the temple grounds while monasteries, related temples, feeding houses, and streets for conducting processional festivals were constructed around it.

for example, in 1513, krishnadevarāya’s two queens donated gopurams to the Viṭhala temple. in 1516–17, krishnadevarāya celebrated the recapture of territories lost to the gajapati kingdom to the northeast by constructing a 100-pillared hall on the Viṭhala temple grounds. According to Verghese, the pillars in this hall are significant because they attest to the Viṭhala tem-ple’s affiliation with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas; many of them are inscribed with nāmams or sectarian marks of both the Vaḍagalai (northern) and Tengalai (southern) factions of this sect. After krishnadevarāya’s reign, but during the lifetime of Vyāsatīrtha, another inscription documents the installation of images of the Alvars or Śri Vaiṣṇava saints inside the Viṭhala temple. later in the sixteenth century, under the successive reigns of Acyutarāya and sadāśiva, new free-standing temples to rāmānuja and the Alvars were built around the Viṭhala temple, attesting to the expansion of an entrenched Śrī Vaiṣṇava dominance in this region of the city. 58

56 see Arjun Appadurai, “kings, sects and Temples in south india, 1350–1700,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 14, no. 1 (1977): 47–73, for an analysis of the broader patterns found in material and honorific exchanges that took place between sectarian leaders and royals in Śrī Vaiṣnava temples during this period. see also Talbot’s critique mentioned in n. 8.

57 According to Verghese, the growth in the cult of Viṭhala was at direct expense, in terms of royal patronage, to the cult of Virupākṣa (Archaeology, Art, and Religion, 104).

58 see Verghese, Religious Traditions, chap. 5, for an overview of construction efforts in Viṭhalapura in the sixteenth century.




There is evidence to suggest that Vyāsatīrtha had a maṭha in the Viṭhalapura section of the capital, 59 and in 1513, during krishnadevarāya’s reign, an inscription from the temple grants him three shares of the food offerings. 60 in 1532, during Acyutarāya’s reign, Vyāsatīrtha donated an icon of yogavarada narasiṁha, one of Viṣṇu’s avatāras, to the Viṭhala tem-ple, possibly to strengthen the mādhva presence there. yet while mādhvas and Śrī Vaiṣṇavas were clearly in the habit of sharing sacred spaces, the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas seem to have dominated at the Viṭhala temple. 61

The Śrī Vaiṣṇavas may even have dominated the new Bālakrishna temple built by krishnadevarāya to celebrate his conquest of Udayagiri in 1515 and his triumphant return to Vijayanagara with an icon of the infant krishna taken from that fort. mādhvas have long claimed a special role in that now defunct temple by virtue of the fact that krishna in his infant form is commonly worshipped by mādhvas and that Vyāsatīrtha is known to have composed a devotional song to this deity upon its arrival in the capital city. furthermore, in a lengthy inscription documenting the single most lavish donation to any temple made by krishnadevarāya, thirty-seven Brahmins, mentioned by name, are appointed to conduct various temple tasks. The mādhvas have traditionally held that two of these names are mādhva names, rāmaṇṇācārya and mulbāgal Timmaṇṇācārya, indicating that mādhva Brahmins played an active role in the temple’s ritual pro-gram. Verghese, however, disputes this and argues that the iconography in the temple, in the form of inscribed Śrī Vaiṣṇava nāmams and Alvar statues, attests to its association with Śrī Vaiṣṇavism. in her estimation, while mādhvas certainly utilized the temple, they did not control it, and a Śrī Vaiṣṇava ritual program would have prevailed there. 62

59 Verghese and dieter eigner (“A monastic Complex in Vithalapura, hampi Vijayana-gara,” South Asian Studies 14 [1998]: 127–40) have identified a maṭha with mādhva affiliation in Viṭhalapura, although there is no explicit reference to Vyāsatīrtha. The only extant inscrip-tion from the largely destroyed structure is post-Vyāsatīrtha.

60 Annual Reports on South Indian Epigraphy (madras: government Press, 1922), no. 710. Cited in Verghese, Religious Traditions, 63.

61 “A survey of inscriptions also shows that as far as we have evidence, the festivals and ceremonies in the temple were according to Śrī Vaiṣṇava practices. We have no inscriptional data of mādhva festivals and rituals being conducted there” (ibid., 66). Another significant Vaiṣṇava temple, the rāmachandra temple, which was located in the royal center amid the living quarters of the king and other nobles and is well known for its relief carvings of scenes from the rāmāyaṇa, also seems to have been affiliated with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas. nāmams of the northern faction of the sect predominate there. There is no similar evidence to support any mādhva affiliation.

62 i am not entirely convinced by Verghese’s reasoning (ibid., 58–59) here. it seems likely that Śrī Vaiṣṇavas dominated the temple after the reign of krishnadevarāya. But it may be that krishnadevarāya mentions the Brahmins individually for the precise reason that they were handpicked from the two different sects, that is, mādhva and Śrī Vaiṣṇava, to manage the temple. furthermore, mulbāgal was a major mādhva educational center at that time.




if all this were not enough to indicate a privileged position for the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas at the sixteenth-century Vijayanagara court, a Śrī Vaiṣṇava guru, govindācārya, is identified in one Vijayanagara inscription as krishnadevarāya’s guru. 63 Thus, it is arguable that the Vaiṣṇavism of the Tuluva emperors was synonymous with Śrī Vaiṣṇavism, in both its northern and southern iterations. however, the privileged position of the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas at the Tuluva court did not mean that Vyāsatirtha and the mādhvas were excluded from royal patronage. Vyāsatīrtha received sev-eral generous donations from krishnadevarāya, including three villages in 1516, a village and two hamlets in 1523, and another village in 1526. 64 furthermore, not only did the mādhvas’ doctrinal similarities with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas conduce to the sharing of religious space and make it possible for Vyāsatīrtha to establish a significant mādhva presence in these royally funded shrines, they also enabled him to collaborate with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas on certain religious projects.

indeed, in a manner similar to his coopting of the term jīvanmukti from Advaita, Vyāsatīrtha seems to mimic those features of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism that may have lent it an advantageous position at court. for example, he seems to emulate some of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism’s more relaxed attitudes toward caste. of course, the division within the Śrī Vaiṣṇava sect between the more san-skritic and implicitly Brahmanical branch of the northern school and the more Tamil-oriented and implicitly mixed-caste branch of the southern school attests to the abiding significance of caste within that community. Tension between these two factions is well documented, particularly over the control of sacred sites such as the temples at Tirupati. yet the presence of Tengalai and Vaḍagalai iconography at the major Vijayanagara Vaiṣṇava shrines seems to indicate that the rivalry between these factions emerged later and that during Vyāsatīrtha’s lifetime, both factions held sway with the Vijayanagara court.

While Vyāsatīrtha adhered to madhva’s theory of an eternal gradation of souls (as will be discussed in detail below), he also composed devo-tional songs in kannada and is credited with strengthening the connection between the Brahminical mādhva maṭhas and the haridāsakuṭa or commu-nity of kannada-speaking, mixed caste devotees of hari. A non-Brahmin

63 Epigraphia Carnatica, vol. 14, md. 115; cited in ibid., 114. To counter this piece of inscriptional evidence, mādhvas cite another inscription carved into the south wall of the maṇḍapa in front of the Viṭhala temple in hampi, in which gifts of villages made by krishnadevarāya to Vyāsatīrtha are recorded. in this inscription, Vyāsatīrtha is addressed as “gurugalu Vyāsarāyaru” or “guru Vyāsatīrtha” (South Indian Inscriptions, vol. iV [1889], no. 277, p. 72).

64 see Verghese, Religious Traditions, app. A, for a survey of all inscriptions located in the capital city. Vyāsatīrtha receives his most significant gifts from krishnadevarāya in 1524 at Tirupati (Tirupati Devasthanam Inscriptions, vol. 3 [hereafter TDI], nos. 157–59, ed. V. Vi-jayaraghavacharya [delhi: sri satguru Publications, 1984]; the details are discussed below).




member of this community, kanakadāsa (1500s) is supposed to have been initiated by Vyāsatīrtha as his student, and there are several songs attributed to Purandaradāsa (who was a Brahmin) that praise Vyāsatīrtha’s openness to teaching non-Brahmins. 65

While Vyāsatīrtha’s connections to non-Brahmin haridāsas cannot be corroborated by other sources beyond the songs, 66 there is evidence in-dicating that Vyāsatīrtha made efforts to cultivate other forms of popular devotionalism perhaps in an attempt to bolster support for his sect. here again he seems to have cooperated with the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas rather than acted as a rival. he seems to have participated in the Śrī Vaiṣṇava project of build-ing a popular cult of rāmāyana figures, particularly the deity hanumān. reverence for hanumān as an incarnation of the wind-god Vāyu has been a significant feature of mādhva Brahminism since the sect’s beginning, when madhva proclaimed himself the third avatāra of Vāyu, after hanumān and Bhīma. That the region of the Vijayanagara capital had long been as-sociated with hanumān’s residence in the monkey kingdom of kishkinda was a significant advantage to Vyāsatīrtha for establishing a connection between dvaita Vedānta and local religious associations. While Vyāsatīrtha may not have installed the 732 icons of hanuman in the capital city that tradition credits him with doing, 67 he is firmly associated with establish-ing a mādhva hanumān shrine, wherein the icon bears distinctive mādhva imagery. located on the banks of the Tungabhadra, the deity in this temple is called the yantroddhāraka hanumān and sits in meditation inside two intersecting triangles, “his knees braced with a cloth band such as is some-times used by yogis to help support themselves.” 68 This temple remains an active one wherein mādhva Brahmins conduct the rites. 69

65 William J. Jackson discusses these connections (72ff.) and translates some of the relevant songs.

66 The copper plate inscription known as the kamalapur Plates of krishnadevarāya from 1526 Ce documents Vyāsatīrtha’s receipt from krishnadevarāya of the village of Bettakonda and several surrounding hamlets. The same plates attest to the fact that Vyāsatīrtha then dis-tributed shares of these endowed lands to a long list of householders and ascetics, includ-ing several shares granted to the sons of Purandaradāsa, who was a Brahmin member of the haridāsakuṭa (Epigraphia Indica, vol. 31 [Calcutta and new delhi: Archeological survey of india, 1955–56], no. 21, lines 269ff.). no mention is made of the śudra kanakadāsa.

67 see rao’s discussion of this tradition promulgated by later pontiffs of Vyāsatīrtha’s maṭha (somanātha, Śrī Vyāsayogīcaritam, xiv).

68 Philip lutgendorf, Hanumān’s Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey (oxford: oxford University Press, 2007), 71. lutgendorf notes that “such a band is a normal feature of im-ages of yoga-narasimha (a meditating image of the man-lion avatara of Vishnu, also popular among madhvas)” (71). indeed, it was an icon of this type that Vyāsatīrtha donated to the Viṭhala temple.

69 furthermore, on Vyāsatīrtha’s tomb, located on an island in the Tungabhadra, an image of rāma-sītā-lakṣmaṇa and hanumān faces outward into the maṇḍapa that is in front of the tomb. Across from this maṇḍapa is a small hanumān temple tended by mādhva priests. Again, the hanumān image is distinctively mādhva; the deity is seated in a lotus pose and holding a book on his lap, although it does not seem that this temple dates to the sixteenth century.




But if Vyāsatīrtha allowed a shared Vaiṣṇava identity to foster coopera-tive enterprises between his sect and the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas, there is also evi-dence that this cooperation was, at least in part, motivated by competition. Without question, the most significant temple presence that Vyāsatīrtha gains for the mādhvas is actually not in the empire’s capital but in the Śrī Venkaṭeśvara mandir in Tirumalai and the related govindarājaswāmi temple down the hill in Tirupati in present-day Andhra Pradesh, 468 ki-lometers away from the capital. Both of these temples were historically and firmly under Śrī Vaiṣṇava control. Three inscriptions from the Tirupati area 70 attest to the fact that on January 12, 1524, Vyāsatīrtha received from krishnadevarāya three house sites, two at the top of the hill and one at the bottom, to be used for the construction of monasteries. Two of the three inscriptions attesting to this gift are located on plaques outside the mon-asteries that Vyāsatirtha built, while the third is inscribed on a wall in the Śrī Venkateśvara mandir itself. According to these three inscriptions, all of these sites had been confiscated by sāluva narasiṁha (krishnadevarāya’s predecessor) from Śrī Vaiṣṇava priests who had been found guilty of steal-ing temple jewels. 71

subsequent to receiving this gift and constructing his two monasteries, Vyāsatīrtha evidently constructed a maṇḍapa or a covered pavilion in front of the maṭha on the hill at which the maṭha regularly distributed prasād or blessed offerings from the temple. Another inscription on the south wall of the Śri Venkaṭeśvara temple 72 says that on november 8, 1524, Vyāsatīrtha made a sizeable donation in the form of 14,000 nar-panam to the temple treasury with the stipulation that the money “be spent for the excavation of tanks and channels in the temple villages” and that the produce derived therefrom be used to supply a long list of articles to be offered on vari-ous days to the deity. in this manner, Vyāsatīrtha arranged for offerings to be made to Śrī Venkaṭeśvara in his maṭha’s name for special festival and other calendar days totaling 354 a year. even more significant perhaps, Vyāsatīrtha arranged that for ninety-six days out of the year the proces-sional icon of the deity would be brought to the maṇḍapa in front of his

70 TDI, nos. 157–59.71 This event seems to be embellished in the biography of Vyāsatīrtha attributed to

Śrīnivāsatīrtha, the Vyāsa Vijaya, and quoted in rao’s edition of somanātha’s biography, which rao views as more authoritative. According to rao (somanātha, Śrī Vyāsayogīcaritam, xc) , the Vyāsa Vijaya states that sāluva narasiṁha had the five priests put to death. Vyāsatīrtha then helps to absolve sāluva narasiṁha of this sin and fills in for the priests in the temple before following sāluva narasiṁha to hampi. however, there are no inscriptional references to this event dating from sāluva’s time; the first reference we have to it is in the inscriptions discussed above, dating from krishnadevarāya’s reign. i am unaware of any evidence, apart from the biographies, to support Vyāsatīrtha’s presence in Tirupati prior to receiving this gift from krishnadevarāya. This is also s. krishnasvami Aiyangar’s assessment (A History of Tirupati, vol. 2 {madras: Tirumalai-Tirupati devastanam, 1941], 81).

72 TDI, no. 165.




maṭha and worshipped there with the prasād being distributed there as well. finally, the same inscription notes that Vyāsatīrtha donated a village and several hamlets to the temple, again, for the purposes of procuring vari-ous food and other elements to be offered to the deity eight times daily (in addition to the special offerings made on the aforementioned 354 days). Those Śrī Vaiṣṇava priests and other temple servants who were involved in making these offerings were given a share of half of these meals, while the remaining four were returned to Vyāsatīrtha’s maṭha. A separate in-scription 73 dated April 2, 1528, indicates that Vyāsatīrtha made an almost equally lavish set of donations to the govindarājaswāmi temple down the hill in Tirupati, where his second monastery was located.

Thus, krishnadevarāya’s donation to Vyāsatīrtha of these house sites that had been confiscated from Śrī Vaiṣṇava priests enabled Vyāsatīrtha to establish a significant mādhva presence at what was arguably the most im-portant Vaiṣṇava shrine in south india. i certainly do not want to overstate the case for rigid sectarian identity in the temple context, and it is possible that there were no hard feelings between the two groups about Vyāsatīrtha getting this land and a regular role in the temples’ ritual programs. indeed, such a role directly benefitted the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas who received a portion of Vyāsatīrtha’s donations.

But, given what we know about the entrenched dominance of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism in the Vijayanagara court, it does seem significant that krishnadevarāya gave Vyāsatīrtha—an out-of-towner, with no established official role in Tirupati 74—confiscated lands and buildings. it also seems significant that krishnadevarāya’s gift to Vyāsatīrtha explicitly mentions the theft incident and records these facts on the same day in three separate locations, indicating that it was an event worth publicizing. This arguably implies that it was an extension of sāluva narasiṁha’s original punishment and a reminder that priests should not behave this way, or else they would have to cede not only some of their property but also some of their control over the shrine’s ritual program and their central role in the redistribution of wealth and honors there.

furthermore, that Vyāsatīrtha saw the Śri Vaiṣṇavas not as teammates but as rivals is evident in his polemical assessments of Viśiṣṭādvaita doctrine. Vyāsatīrtha is the first mādhva philosopher to critique rāmānuja’s ideas in any detail. While he devotes significantly more time and attention to highlight-ing the flaws of key Advaita doctrines, his in-depth criticisms of Viśiṣṭādvaita significantly expand the parameters of dvaita polemical literature. As with

73 TDI, no. 175.74 somanatha’s biography emphasizes Vyāsatīrtha’s long-standing, pre-krishnadevarāya

associations with Tirupati. The text places Vyāsatīrtha there for a period of twelve years, dur-ing sāluva narasiṁha’s rule from Chandragiri, prior to Vyāsatīrtha’s relocation to the imperial court at hampi (somanātha, Śrī Vyāsayogīcaritam, 53). however, there is no inscriptional evidence attesting to Vyāsatīrtha’s presence in Tirupati prior to these 1524 inscriptions.




Advaita, Vyāsatīrtha possesses a firm handle on Viśiṣṭādvaita tenets, 75 knowledge that would likely have been gleaned through the close proximity and regular interaction of these two sects.

for example, the final section of the Nyāyāmṛta contests the Viśiṣṭādvaita understanding of the jīva’s experience of mokṣa. one of the unifying fea-tures of madhva’s and rāmānuja’s respective conceptions of mokṣa is that souls retain some individuality in this state; in madhva’s case, they do not merge into Brahman because they remain fundamentally distinct from and inferior to him. But they do experience a kind of blissful proximity to Viṣṇu, as suits their innate capacity or yogyatā, which is a key concept in dvaita philosophy. in rāmānuja’s system, souls do experience a kind of blissful merger with Viṣṇu but simultaneously retain some separateness and individuality by virtue of the śeṣī-śeṣa doctrine. According to this doctrine, souls are subsidiary parts to Viṣṇu’s great whole; the souls in Viśiṣṭādvaita are like the body of god and thus are not completely identical with his perfect, transcendent nature. souls exist to serve the lord in the same way that the body exists to serve the soul.

Vyāsatīrtha’s final section of the Nyāyāmṛta attempts to argue for the existence of a hierarchy of jīvas or souls in mokṣa, in keeping with madh-va’s doctrine of svayogyatā or the inherent capacity of souls to achieve pre-determined soteriological ends. This is one of dvaita’s most controversial doctrines according to other Vedāntin thinkers, but Vyāsatīrtha here argues that an eternal hierarchy of souls is very much in keeping with Viśiṣṭādvaita views of reality. he argues that rāmānuja and his followers are disingenu-ous to maintain the abiding existence of individual identity and yet to argue for equality of those individual souls in the state of mokṣa ( paramasāmya). As is typical of Vyāsatīrtha, he uses a reductio ad absurdum technique to point out the logical flaws in the Śrī Vaiṣṇava position. speaking of the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas’ rejection of the notion of tāratamya or hierarchy in mokṣa, he writes:

is your position that there is no hierarchy between the liberated jīva and god? or is it that there is no such hierarchy amongst the liberated jīvas? it cannot be the former, i.e., that there is no hierarchy between the liberated jīvas and god, because in your own system there already is such a hierarchy by virtue of the fact that one is all pervasive, and the other is atomic, one has the status of being a śeṣī and the other has the status of being a śeṣa, one is independent, and the other is dependent, etc. And it would not be suitable for the world if there were multiple iśvaras/gods [which would be the case if there were no hierarchy between god and the jīvas]. 76

75 see n. 22.76 “Antye ’pi kiṃ muktajīveśayoratāratamyam? kiṃ vā muktajīvānāmeva? nādyaḥ, tvan-

mate ’pi tayorvibhutvāṇutvaśeṣatvasvātantryapāratantryādinā tāratamyāt| anekeśvarāpattyā jagat pravṛttyayogācca|” (Vyāsatīrtha, Nyāyamṛtam, 704).




Vyāsatīrtha goes on to cite many instances where rāmānuja affirmatively cites bhedaśrutis or authoritative Vedic statements indicating a difference between god and human souls as well as Brahma sutra iV.4.9, jagad vyāpāra varjam, which supports the idea that Brahman alone is master of the cosmic processes of creation, maintenance, and destruction. he also argues for a hierarchy between god and human souls on the basis of reasoning from experience, stating that: “The enjoyment of a liberated jīva is inferior to the enjoyment of god because it is the enjoyment of merely a jīva. Just as the enjoyment of a soul in saṁsāra is less [than any joy that god or a liberated jīva might experience].” 77 he also uses another inference: “iśvara’s bliss is superior to the bliss of jīvas, because it is the bliss of the controller, just as the bliss of the one who is to be served is invariably superior to the bliss of the servant.” 78

having dismissed the first possibility that there is no hierarchical rela-tionship between god and individual human souls, Vyāsatīrtha moves on to discuss the second option regarding hierarchy’s existence among liberated souls. he writes: “it is not the second option either (i.e., that there is no gradation amongst the individual liberated souls). Because even in your sys-tem of thought, there is lakṣmī who is a tattva or a fundamental principle in reality and who is of the nature of a śeṣī to the jīvas, i.e., the jīvas are sub-sidiary parts to her whole, and because there is also superiority to [the jīvas] of other jīvas such as Viṣvaksena, etc. by virtue of their being niyāmakas or controllers.” 79 here, Vyāsatīrtha is alluding to those works attributed to rāmānuja, such as the Gadyas and the Nityagrantha, which deal with ritual. These texts call for a subordinate kind of reverence for deities other than Viṣṇu who possess specific cosmic powers, including the goddesses Śrī, Bhumī, and nīla and some of the celestial ministers, especially Ananta and Viṣvaksena. 80 similar practices are present in mādhva ritual, where there is an acknowledged hierarchy of deities who are supposed to be honored in accordance with their particular role in reality. in fact, the hierarchy of jīvas in dvaita extends downward from the divine to the human realm. it seems that what Vyāsatīrtha is implying is that in Śrī Vaiṣṇava practice, if not in theory, there is a hierarchy of deities, so why wouldn’t there also be a corresponding hierarchy of liberated souls in the state of mokṣa?

Vyāsatīrtha evinces other arguments supporting the view that there is an eternal gradation of divine and human souls. At one point in this section, he

77 “muktajīvabhogaḥ īśvarabhogānnikṛṣṭaḥ, jīvabhogatvāt saṁsāribhogavat|” (ibid.).78 “iśvarānando jīvānandādutkṛṣṭaḥ, tadavaśyatanniyāmakānandatvād, yadevaṃ tadevam,

yathā sevakānandātsevyamānandaḥ|” (ibid., 704–5).79 “na dvitīyaḥ, tvanmate ’pi jīvān, prati śeṣiṇo ’pi lakṣmītattvāt tān prati niyāmakādviṣva

ksenāditaścetarajīvānāṃ nikṛṣṭatvāt|” (ibid., 705).80 John Braisted Carman, The Theology of Rāmānuja: An Essay in Interreligious Under-

standing (new haven, CT: yale University Press, 1974), 242.




talks about how different bhaktas or devotees offer different types of devo-tion and that the sacred texts indicate this in passages like Bhagavadgītā 9.32–33, which states, “if they rely on me, Arjuna, even women, common-ers, people of low rank, even men born in the womb of evil reach the high-est way. how easy is it then for holy priests and devoted royal sages?” 81 Vyāsatīrtha maintains that Viśiṣṭādvaita also draws such distinctions; in-deed, he alludes to a difference between the two branches of Śrī Vaiṣṇavism over how mokṣa is to be obtained. The northern/sanskritic faction has historically advocated bhakti or devotional practice while the southern/Tamil faction has advocated prapatti or total surrender to god. each fac-tion allows that the correct means to mokṣa depends upon the nature of the mumukṣu, the one aspiring to liberation. however, the northern faction typ-ically posits bhakti as the more difficult path. 82 Vyāsatīrtha takes advantage of this distinction to argue that if there is a difference of methods (sādhanas) to achieve the goal, and if this difference implies that some aspirants are superior to others because they can use a more difficult method, there should also be a hierarchy of experience within the goal itself. 83

Vyāsatīrtha’s critique of rāmānuja’s notion of equality of jīvas in mokṣa highlights the fact that there is a necessary element of hierarchy in any the-istic system. What is significant for our purposes is that Vyāsatīrtha insists that rāmānuja’s position that souls are distinct from one another and that the various deities also have eternally distinct cosmic functions requires ad-vocating a hierarchy of souls, even in the state of liberation. Unlike the case of Advaita’s jīvanmukti concept, Vyāsatīrtha is not coopting Viśiṣṭādvaita terminology to show how it works better in his own system. rather, he is highlighting the fact that his system’s explicit doctrines are implicit in rāmānuja’s teachings and, therefore, ought to be acknowledged as valid by the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas for the sake of consistency. in the case of the smārtas, Vyāsatīrtha’s polemics emphasize the fundamental differences between the two ways of viewing reality and the illegitimacy of certain Advaita claims. in his critique of the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas, he is arguing that they must accept the dvaita view on mokṣa as being more consistent with their own basic premises.

81 Barbara stoler miller, trans., The Bhagavadgītā: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War (new york: Bantam, 1990).

82 Carman, The Theology of Rāmānuja, 214.83 etena bhaktiprapattyorviṣamatve ‘pi śaktāśaktaviṣayatvātphalasāmyamiti nirastam,

tathā ‘śravaṇāt| kalpane cātiprasangāt| tasmātsādhanatāratamyānmuktitāratamyam|. There-fore, the following idea is refuted: that even though there may be a difference between bhakti and prapatti by virtue of a distinction in capability, there is equality in the result achieved. likewise, [it is refuted] because it is not indicated in śruti. And, as an independent theory, it goes too far. Therefore, because there is a hierarchy of methods [for achieving mokṣa], there is hierarchy within mokṣa (Vyāsatīrtha, Nyāymṛtam, 708).




summationVyāsatīrtha’s polemical attacks on Advaita Vedānta and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta were motivated by genuine doctrinal differences. But they also reflect Vyāsatīrtha’s efforts to secure for his sect a greater presence in the Vijayanagara court. it is ironic perhaps that his emphasis on doctrinal dif-ferences actually blurs some of the boundaries between the three sects through his use of his intellectual rivals’ terminology in the case of Advaita and through highlighting unacknowledged similarities between dvaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita. on the one hand, it was precisely through such tactics that Vyāsatīrtha made a case for dvaita’s distinctive doctrinal relevance. on the other, such tactics also reveal that the boundaries between hindu sects could be porous. indeed, we have seen that these sectarian groups selectively allowed shared devotional identities to override other ideological divisions in ways that fostered collaborative religious activity.

it remains the case, however, that much of this intersectarian collabora-tion was competitive. The historically ecumenical patronage practices of the Vijayanagara emperors meant that almost everyone got some resources for his sect. But ecumenism is not the same as religious neutrality or indiffer-ence; in fact, in the case of the Tuluva dynasty, it appears to have fostered sectarian ambitions of securing the personal devotional preferences of the king, which could lead to particularly significant gains of cultural capital.

While Vyāsatīrtha clearly attained considerable stature at the Vijayanag-ara court, one must still account for the apparently unabating supremacy of the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas over the mādhvas—a supremacy that increased after Vyāsatīrtha’s death. The most likely explanation would take account of the two sects’ respective doctrinal positions in relation to broader sociopolitical factors. mādhva Vedānta’s insistence on the eternal hierarchy of souls, even within the state of mokṣa, has long been a controversial doctrine of limited popular appeal. The Śrī Vaiṣṇavas’ established preeminence in the region may have meant that there was simply no room for a completely distinct alternative form of Vaiṣṇavism. The best that a rival sectarian leader like Vyāsatīrtha could hope for was perhaps exactly what he achieved: a promi-nent position within the main Śrī Vaiṣṇava shrine at Tirupati.

The fact that Vyāsatīrtha’s treatises elicited extensive responses and that he garnered significant patronage from krishnadevarāya indicate that his efforts to be the type of religious leader who not only authors polemi-cal texts but installs icons, composes songs, funds irrigation projects, and founds maṭhas were not in vain. But they also attest to the nexus of op-portunity and pressure that confronted him at the Vijayanagara court. The empire’s ecumenical patronage of differing religious sects inspired compe-tition and rivalry as much as it did cooperation and exchange between them.



polemics and patronage in sixteenth-century vijayanagara: vyāsatīrtha and the dynamics of hindu...

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