Vedanta Desika: The Man Who Lived on Gleanings and Refused Kings

The wager. The story of his most famous work.

• At Srirangam, a visiting poet, named in the accounts as Dindima Kavi, challenged the local scholars
• The challenge was a composition contest, to be completed in a single yamam, a watch of roughly three hours, overnight
• Desika accepted
• The subject he took was the paduka, the sandals of the Lord
• By morning he had composed 1008 verses
• The rival had not finished

What the Paduka Sahasram is:

• 1008 Sanskrit verses in praise of the padukas of Ranganatha
• Divided into thirty two paddhatis, sections
• In a very wide range of metres
• Including a section of extraordinary technical difficulty

The Chitra Paddhati. This is the part that is difficult to believe until you see it.

One section consists of chitra bandha verses: pattern poems in which the syllables, when arranged in a grid, form pictures, or in which the verse reads the same in multiple directions.

Among them:

• Verses arranged to form the shape of a chakra, a drum, a sword, a lotus
• Verses that read identically forward and backward, palindromes, at the syllable level
• The Ekakshara verse, composed using a single consonant throughout
• The Dviakshara using two
• Verses in which two different verses share the same syllables read in different orders
• The Sarvatobhadra, a verse that reads the same in all four directions when written in a grid

Why anybody would do this. Three answers, and all are true.

One, it was a contest and he was showing what could be done.

Two, the constraint is a discipline. Composing meaning under an arbitrary formal restriction is an old Indian intellectual practice and it is genuinely hard.

Three, and this is the tradition's own reading: the subject is the Lord's sandals, the lowest object associated with him, and the poet approached it with the highest possible technical effort. The disproportion is the devotion.

Why sandals. The paduka has a specific meaning in the tradition.

• In the Ramayana, Bharata placed Rama's sandals on the throne of Ayodhya and ruled as their servant for fourteen years
• The sandals are therefore the representative of the absent Lord, and the sign of a regency held in trust
• In Sri Vaishnavism the Satari or Sathakopam, placed on devotees' heads after darshan, represents the feet of Nammalvar, which is a related idea
• The paduka is what a devotee is in relation to the Lord: something that carries him and is trodden on

How the work is used:

• Recited, in whole or in part
• The Paduka Sahasram is a major text of the Vadakalai tradition and is studied
• Individual sections are set to music and performed
• There are editions with translation and with the chitra bandha patterns diagrammed, which is the way to see what he did

A note on the composition claim. A thousand and eight verses of that technical difficulty in three hours is not a claim historians can verify, and a guide should say so.

What is verifiable is the text: it exists, the chitra bandha verses work, and the technical feats are real whatever the timeline.

Whether they were done in one night or over a longer period does not change what is on the page, and what is on the page is remarkable.

The most consequential event of his life was a catastrophe, and it should be described plainly.

What happened:

• In 1323, forces of the Delhi Sultanate under Ulugh Khan, later Muhammad bin Tughlaq, campaigned into the far south
• Srirangam was attacked and the temple was sacked
• Very large numbers of people at the temple were killed
• The utsava murti, the processional image of Ranganatha, was taken away by devotees and hidden, beginning a period of decades in which it was moved between places including Tirupati and eventually Melukote, before being returned
• The temple was occupied and worship interrupted for a long period

Where Desika was. At Srirangam.

What he did:

• He took the Sri Bhashya, Ramanuja's commentary on the Brahma Sutras, in manuscript
• And the two young sons of Sudarshana Suri, the author of the Shruta Prakashika, the principal commentary on the Sri Bhashya, who was killed
• And escaped
• By tradition, he survived the massacre by lying among the dead until it was possible to move
• He went west, to Satyagalam in what is now Karnataka, and remained there for years
• He preserved and taught the Sri Bhashya, and raised Sudarshana Suri's sons
• He returned to Srirangam after the temple was recovered

Why this matters for the tradition. The commentary tradition of Vishishtahdvaita survives partly because one man carried a manuscript and two children out of a burning temple.

How to write about this period honestly. It requires care and a guide should not duck it.

What is established:

• The Delhi Sultanate campaigns into the Deccan and the far south in the early fourteenth century occurred
• Srirangam was attacked and there was very substantial loss of life and destruction
• The Koil Olugu, the temple's own chronicle, and the Madhura Vijayam of Gangadevi describe the period
• Worship was interrupted for decades and the deity was in exile
• The Vijayanagara rulers were substantially responsible for the recovery and restoration

What should not be done with it:

• It should not be used to make claims about people alive now. The soldiers of a fourteenth century campaign are not the ancestors, in any meaningful sense, of your neighbours
• India's Muslim population is overwhelmingly descended from people who were already here
• Medieval warfare across every region and religion involved the sacking of religious sites, including by Hindu rulers against Hindu, Jain and Buddhist establishments
• Historical grievance is not a devotional practice and does not belong in one

What should be done with it:

• Remembered accurately, including the deaths
• Understood as part of why certain texts, practices and images survive and others do not
• And used, if at all, as the tradition itself used it: as an occasion for the preservation work Desika did rather than for anything else

The recovery. Worth stating because it is the better part of the story.

The image was hidden, moved, protected across decades by ordinary devotees at considerable risk, and eventually brought back. The temple was restored under Vijayanagara patronage. Worship resumed and has continued since.

That is roughly seven hundred years of continuity since, and it exists because people carried things away and kept them.

Philosophy:

• Nyaya Siddhanjana, on the categories of Vishishtadvaita
• Tattva Mukta Kalapa, a philosophical work in verse with his own commentary the Sarvartha Siddhi
• Satadushani, the hundred refutations, arguing against the Advaita position
• Tattva Tika, a commentary on Ramanuja's Sri Bhashya
• Seshvara Mimamsa, on the Purva Mimamsa read theistically

Manipravala and the rahasyas:

• Rahasya Traya Sara, the essence of the three secrets, his major work on the Tirumantra, the Dwaya and the Charama Sloka
• This is the central text of the Vadakalai tradition on doctrine and practice
• Written in Manipravala, so that it would be accessible to those without full Sanskrit

The three rahasyas are worth naming, since they recur across this series:

• The Tirumantra, the eight syllable Om Namo Narayanaya
• The Dwaya, the two part mantra of surrender to Narayana with Sri
• The Charama Sloka, the Gita's verse 18.66, in which Krishna tells Arjuna to abandon all dharmas and take refuge in him alone

These are traditionally received from an acharya rather than picked up from a book, and this guide will not set out the mantras themselves for that reason.

Poetry:

• Paduka Sahasram, described above
• Yadavabhyudaya, a mahakavya on Krishna's life, on which the Advaita scholar Appayya Dikshita later wrote a commentary, which is a notable instance of cross tradition respect
• Hamsa Sandesa, a messenger poem in the tradition of Kalidasa's Meghaduta, in which Rama sends a swan to Sita
• Subhashita Nivi, on ethics

Drama:

• Sankalpa Suryodaya, an allegorical play in ten acts in which the characters are qualities: Discrimination, Delusion, Compassion, Desire, and so on, and the action is the soul's progress
• It is modelled on the Prabodha Chandrodaya of Krishna Mishra and is a substantial work of Sanskrit drama

Stotras. This is what most people actually use.

• Daya Satakam, a hundred verses on the compassion of the Lord at Tirupati, personified as Daya Devi
• Godastuti, in praise of Andal
• Bhagavad Dhyana Sopanam, on meditating on the Lord's form part by part
• Garuda Dandakam, on Garuda
• Abhitistava, a hymn for protection, composed at the time of the Srirangam crisis
• Varadaraja Panchasat, on the deity at Kanchipuram
• Achyuta Satakam, in Prakrit
• Hayagriva Stotra, on Hayagriva, the horse headed form of Vishnu who is the deity of learning

Hayagriva is particularly associated with him. Desika is said to have received the Hayagriva mantra and to have been granted his knowledge through it, and his own image is frequently shown with the Hayagriva image.

Students in Sri Vaishnava families are often given the Hayagriva stotra before examinations, which is the practical afterlife of that association.

Tamil works:

• The Desika Prabandham, a collection of his Tamil compositions
• Written in the style of the Alvars, which is a deliberate statement about the equality of the two languages

The point of the range. He wrote philosophy for philosophers, Manipravala for practitioners, Sanskrit poetry for the literary world, Tamil for the devotional community, and stotras for anybody.

That is a deliberate strategy of covering every register, and it is why his influence is as wide as it is.

Vedanta Desika is the principal acharya of one of the two divisions of Sri Vaishnavism, and the division should be described carefully, since it is live.

The two:

• Vadakalai, the northern school, with Vedanta Desika as its principal acharya
• Tenkalai, the southern school, with Manavala Mamunigal as its principal acharya

How the division arose. Gradually, over the centuries after Ramanuja, crystallising in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries and hardening later.

Both accept Ramanuja, the Sri Bhashya, the Prabandham, the Alvars and the acharya lineage. The disagreement is over emphasis and interpretation, not over the tradition's foundations.

The classic points of difference. These are usually listed as eighteen, the ashtadasa bheda, and the main ones are:

• The role of Sri. Whether she is herself infinite and a means of liberation in her own right, or a mediator who is finite in a particular technical sense
• Prapatti, surrender. Whether it is an act the soul performs which requires certain conditions, or whether even the act is the Lord's doing
• Whether prapatti needs to be performed once with full understanding, or is a state
• Grace. The markata nyaya, the monkey analogy, in which the young monkey holds on to the mother, against the marjara nyaya, the cat analogy, in which the kitten is carried and does nothing
• Whether karma and other disciplines have a role
• Ritual and social questions, including the details of the urdhva pundra, the forehead mark

The monkey and the cat is the image most people know, and it is a genuine difference of emphasis.

Vadakalai: the soul must hold on, as a baby monkey grips its mother. Some effort is required.

Tenkalai: the soul is carried, as a kitten is picked up by the scruff. No effort is required and any claim of effort is a claim of merit.

How to hold this. Two things need saying.

One, the difference is real and the arguments on both sides are serious. Substantial philosophical literature exists and the acharyas of both schools were formidable.

Two, the difference has also produced centuries of institutional conflict, including litigation over temple rights, control of shrines and the form of ritual, some of it bitter and some of it still in the courts.

What a guide should do about it. State the positions, not adjudicate them.

This series will describe both Desika and Manavala Mamunigal on their own terms and will not tell a reader which is correct. That is a question for people within the tradition, and members of it disagree.

What a visitor should do:

• At a temple, follow the practice of that temple
• Do not argue about which school is right in somebody else's shrine
• If you are receiving instruction from an acharya, you will be in one tradition or the other, and that is how the question resolves for an individual

A note on the general pattern. Every large tradition divides.

• Advaita has its sub schools and mathas
• Madhva's tradition has the Ashta Mathas and their differences
• Shaiva Siddhanta, Kashmir Shaivism and the Lingayat tradition are distinct
• The Gaudiya tradition divided repeatedly
• The same is true of every religion of comparable size anywhere

Division is what happens when a tradition is large enough and serious enough that its members care about getting it right. It is a sign of intellectual life, not of decay, and it becomes a problem only when it moves from argument to control of property.

Where Desika stands. He is not only a Vadakalai figure.

His stotras, particularly the Hayagriva Stotra, the Daya Satakam and the Godastuti, are recited across the tradition and beyond it, and the Paduka Sahasram is admired as Sanskrit literature by people with no stake in the argument at all.

The Hayagriva Stotra. The one most people meet first.

• Thirty three verses in Sanskrit, in praise of Hayagriva, the horse headed form of Vishnu, who is the deity of learning and knowledge
• Widely recited by students before examinations, at the start of study, and at Vidyarambha
• Available with translation and recordings everywhere
• Short enough to learn

Hayagriva. Worth a note.

• A form of Vishnu with a horse's head
• The story is that the Vedas were stolen by the asuras Madhu and Kaitabha, and Vishnu took this form to recover them
• He is the deity of learning, and the equivalent role in Vaishnava practice to Saraswati's in general practice
• Thiruvahindrapuram, near Cuddalore, and Kanchipuram are associated with him and with Desika

On praying before examinations. Since this is the commonest use, it is worth saying plainly.

Reciting a stotra before an examination is a reasonable thing to do. It settles the mind, marks the occasion, and connects the effort to something larger.

It is not a substitute for having studied, and no tradition claims it is. The Hayagriva Stotra is a hymn to the deity of learning, and learning means the work.

If a student in your household is anxious, the useful things are the ordinary ones: sleep, food, a realistic timetable, and somebody saying that the result will not change how they are regarded. Add the stotra to that, not instead of it.

And if a young person is in real distress about examinations, that is common and it is serious. Tele MANAS is 14416 in India, free, and there are student helplines during examination seasons.

The Daya Satakam:

• A hundred verses on the compassion of the Lord of Tirumala
• Compassion is treated as a person, Daya Devi, and addressed
• Recited particularly by those with a connection to Tirupati

The Godastuti:

• Twenty nine verses in praise of Andal
• Recited at Srivilliputhur and in Andal observances
• A Sanskrit hymn by a Vadakalai acharya to a Tamil woman saint, which is itself worth noticing

The Abhitistava:

• A hymn for protection, composed at the time of the Srirangam crisis
• Recited in difficulty

Bhagavad Dhyana Sopanam:

• The ladder of meditation on the Lord
• Moves up the form of Ranganatha part by part, in the same manner as Thiruppaan Alvar's Amalanadhipiran
• Useful as a structure for darshan

Places

Thoopul, Kanchipuram:

• His birthplace, a locality of Kanchipuram
• The Deepa Prakasa temple, a Divya Desam, and the Desika shrine
• Varadaraja Perumal temple nearby

Thiruvahindrapuram:

• Near Cuddalore, where he spent a substantial period
• The Devanatha Perumal temple, a Divya Desam
• The Hayagriva shrine on the hill, Oushadhagiri, associated with his receiving the mantra
• The Garuda Nadi and the sites connected to his stotras

Srirangam:

• Where the Paduka Sahasram was composed and where he was during the sack
• His shrine

Satyagalam:

• In Chamarajanagar district, Karnataka, where he took refuge for years

A practice from him:

• The Hayagriva Stotra, or its opening verse, before study or work requiring concentration
• The Bhagavad Dhyana Sopanam as a structure for looking at an image slowly
• And, if you want the harder lesson, the unchavritti principle: not that you should live on gleanings, but that it is worth knowing what you would refuse, and what your work would look like if nobody were paying for it.