Rāmānuja

Rāmānuja is the central teacher of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition of South India. Tradition dates his life from 1017 to 1137, a span of a hundred and twenty years that most scholars shorten, placing his main activity in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. He was born at Śrīperumbudūr near Kāñcīpuram and studied Vedānta with Yādavaprakāśa, from whose teaching he broke over the reading of the Upaniṣads.

He was drawn into the lineage of Yāmuna, the leading Śrī Vaiṣṇava teacher of the previous generation, through Yāmuna’s disciples, and became the head of the community at the temple of Śrīraṅgam. The hagiographies say he spent some years in exile in what is now Karnataka, at Melkote, to escape a Cōḻa king hostile to Vaiṣṇavism, and returned to Śrīraṅgam later in life.

His major works are the Śrībhāṣya, his commentary on the Brahma Sūtras; the Vedārthasaṅgraha, a summary of his reading of the Upaniṣads; and a commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā. He wrote in Sanskrit, but stood in a tradition shaped by the Tamil hymns of the Āḻvārs, and joined the Upaniṣadic philosophy of Brahman to their devotion to Viṣṇu. His school became the most influential rival to Advaita in Vedānta.