Person · Dvaita saint & royal preceptor · India
Vyāsatīrtha
Also known as Vyasa Tirtha, Vyasaraja, Vyasa Raya
Vyāsatīrtha (1460-1539), the Dvaita Vedanta saint and dialectician of the Madhva tradition, pontiff of the Sosale Vyasaraja Matha in southern Karnataka from 1513 and rajaguru to Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara. His three Sanskrit polemics — the Nyayamrita, the Tarkatandava and the Tatparyachandrika — demolished Advaita Vedantic arguments and established Dvaita as the court philosophy of the empire. Credited with consecrating 732 Hanuman shrines across the Deccan (including the Yantrodharaka Hanuman at Hampi), the shishya of the Dasa saint Purandara Dasa, and the organiser of the devotional-performative Haridasa movement in Kannada and Telugu.
- Periods
- Vijayanagara
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Connections (1)
- Founder ofYantrodharaka Hanuman Temple, Hampi
Vyasatirtha consecrated the Yantrodharaka Hanuman at Hampi around 1515 as the mother house of the 732 Hanuman shrines he is credited with founding across the Deccan. The shrine's svayambhu bas-relief of Hanuman is said in the Madhva tradition to have taken on stone form over twelve days of charcoal drawing by the saint himself — the proof of the yantra's self-manifestation that gave the shrine its name.