Person · Vedanta philosopher
Madhvāchārya
Also known as Madhva, Madhvacharya, Anandatirtha, Purnaprajna
Tulu-country philosopher who argued Dvaita, the irreducible difference between God, soul and world, against both Shankara's non-dualism and Rāmānuja's qualified version. He founded the Udupi Krishna maṭha and the eight maṭhas that still rotate its worship, and wrote thirty-seven works including commentaries on the Gītā and the Brahma Sūtras.
- Date
- c. 1238 – 1317
- Function
- Learning & scholarship
- Tradition
- Dvaita Vedanta corpus; Madhva Vijaya
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
Tradition has him recover the Krishna image from a lump of gopīchandana clay used as ship's ballast, wrecked off Malpe. The image faced away from the entrance, so a window was cut in the back wall — the Kanakana Kindi, through which darshan is still taken.
Connections (5)
- Life routePājaka
Pājaka near Udupi is Madhva's birthplace, some twelve kilometres from the maṭha he founded. The Dvaita school therefore begins and centres inside one small stretch of the Tulu coast, from which its maṭha heads have toured the whole peninsula for seven centuries. His birth name was Vāsudeva and he is said to have been a formidable wrestler and swimmer before ordination, which the Dvaita hagiographies dwell on more than his opponents expect.
- Teaching lineageMantrālayam
Mantrālayam holds the samādhi of Rāghavendra Swāmi, the best-known figure of the Dvaita line Madhva began, who entered it alive in 1671. The school runs from Udupi on the west coast to the Tungabhadrā in Andhra, and these are its two great pilgrim destinations. Rāghavendra's brindāvana at Mantrālayam draws Muslims as well as Hindus, because the land it stands on is said in the shrine's own account to have been given by the local nawab.
- Teaching lineageRāghavendra Tīrtha
Rāghavendra stands in the line Madhva began three and a half centuries earlier, as head of the Kumbhakonam maṭha. His Parimala is a commentary on Jayatīrtha's commentary on Madhva, which is how the Dvaita tradition works: it advances by annotation rather than by fresh statement, and a great scholar is one who explains his predecessors better.
- Monastic foundationUdupi
Udupi is Madhva's foundation and the institutional home of Dvaita. That the most realist of the three Vedāntas ended up with the most elaborate temple institution — eight maṭhas rotating worship on a fixed two-year cycle — is not a coincidence: a philosophy of real difference produces real procedure. The paryāya handover happens in public every two years and has run unbroken since the thirteenth century, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating institutional rotations anywhere in India.
- Teaching lineagePurandara Dasa
The Haridāsa movement was Madhva's Dvaita put into Kannada song, carried by singers rather than by scholars, and Purandara Dāsa is its central figure. Vyāsatīrtha, a Dvaita ācharya and Krishnadevarāya's preceptor, is named as his teacher. A philosophy of real difference between God and soul turns out to have produced the devotional repertoire of an entire linguistic region.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Madhvacharya”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
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