Madhva

Madhva (also Madhvācārya, Ānandatīrtha, Pūrṇaprajña; 1238–1317, by the traditional dating) was a theologian and philosopher from the Tulu-speaking coast of Karnataka who founded Dvaita Vedānta, the dualist school of Vedānta. He is the third of the great ācāryas of Vedānta, after Ādi Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja, and the most radical opponent of Advaita. Where Śaṅkara taught that the self is identical with Brahman and Rāmānuja that it is a dependent part of God’s body, Madhva taught that God, souls and the world are eternally and essentially distinct, that Viṣṇu alone is independent, and that the soul’s highest good is loving, dependent service to God — not identity with him.

Life

Our main source is the Madhvavijaya (“The Victory of Madhva”), a poetic biography by Nārāyaṇa Paṇḍitācārya, son of one of Madhva’s disciples, full of miracles. Madhva was born Vāsudeva at Pājaka, near Udupi, into a Brahmin family. He was a strong, athletic boy, said to have wrestled and swum prodigiously. He took monastic initiation from Acyutaprekṣa, a teacher in an Advaita lineage, receiving the name Pūrṇaprajña, but soon quarrelled with his teacher’s interpretations and set out his own.

He travelled widely in South India, debating Advaitins and others, and twice made the journey to Badrīnāth in the Himālaya, where, the biography says, he met the sage Vyāsa himself at his hermitage, received his blessing, and learned the true meaning of the scriptures. Back in Udupi, he installed an image of Kṛṣṇa — legend says he found it in a lump of clay ballast from a shipwreck — and founded the temple that remains the centre of the Mādhva tradition, with eight monasteries to serve it. He died, according to tradition, by disappearing while teaching the Aitareya Upaniṣad in 1317; his followers believe he lives on at Badrīnāth with Vyāsa.

Works

Madhva wrote thirty-seven works, the Sarvamūla (“root of all”): commentaries on the Brahma Sūtras (the Bhāṣya and the longer Anuvyākhyāna), the Bhagavad Gītā, ten principal Upaniṣads and part of the Ṛg Veda; the Mahābhārata Tātparya Nirṇaya, an interpretation of the epic; a commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa; and short polemical treatises such as the Viṣṇutattvavinirṇaya (“Ascertainment of the Truth about Viṣṇu”), the Māyāvāda Khaṇḍana (“Refutation of Illusionism”), and the Upādhi Khaṇḍana. His style is terse; the commentaries of Jayatīrtha made it intelligible.

Teaching

Madhva’s philosophy rests on two pillars. First, realism: the world exists and our knowledge of it is valid; difference is real and is the very nature of things. Second, theism: God, Viṣṇu, is the one independent being, perfect in every quality, the efficient cause of everything, the source of all knowledge and activity, the dispenser of grace. Everything follows: the five differences; the reading of the Upaniṣads’ identity statements as statements of resemblance or dependence; the innate nature of souls; and liberation as eternal, joyful service. See Dvaita Vedānta.

Madhva was a fierce polemicist. He regarded Advaita as a deliberate deception, māyāvāda, propagated by demons to mislead souls fit for darkness. He also introduced into Vedānta the authority of texts others ignored — Purāṇas, Pañcarātra Āgamas, and sometimes texts quoted from sources no one else knew, which modern scholars have suspected he composed himself.

Legacy

The Mādhva tradition is strong in Karnataka and among Tulu, Kannada and Konkani speakers. Its devotional wing produced the Haridāsas — Narahari Tīrtha, Śrīpādarāja, Purandaradāsa (1484–1564, the “father of Carnatic music”), and Kanakadāsa (a shepherd-caste poet for whom, legend says, the Kṛṣṇa image at Udupi turned around so that he could see it through a crack in the wall after being refused entry). Through Mādhva influence on Bengal, Madhva’s theology is claimed as an ancestor of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism of Caitanya, and so of the modern Hare Kṛṣṇa movement.