MADHVA

MADHVA (1238–1317), also known as Anandatīrtha or Pūrnaprajñā; founder of the Dvaita Vedānta school of Indian philosophy. Born in Pajakakṣetra near Udipi in the Tulu country of the Indian state of Karnataka, Madhva attracted attention as a young renunciate by his prodigious abilities in reciting, interpreting, and criticizing scriptural and exegetical texts. Gathering pupils at his classes in Udipi, he made numerous trips throughout India accompanied by his disciples, including at least two visits to Badrinath in the Himalayas. It is believed that he debated a number of prominent scholars during his lifetime.

Madhva established his main temple, consecrated to the god Kṛṣṇa, at Udipi, and installed in it the idol of Bāla Kṛṣṇa secured from Dwarka. The temple has flourished to this day in the charge of a steady line of successors stemming from Madhva and his disciples. Tradition holds that in the year 1317, in the middle of delivering a lecture, Madhva vanished and retired permanently to Badrinath.

Madhva is credited with some thirty-seven works, including commentaries on the Bhagavadgītā, the Brahma Sūtras, and ten of the older Upaniṣads; ten independent treatises on Dvaita philosophy; short commentaries on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Mahābhārata, and part of the Ṛgveda; and a number of other brief works of a varied nature. Many of these treatises were subsequently commented upon by Jayatīrtha, Vyāsatīrtha, and other famous Dvaitins; the resulting large body of literature forms the basis of Dvaita Vedānta.

Dvaita stands in strong contrast to Śaṅkara's Advaita system in its conception of brahman as a personal God, independent of all other things and different from them. Madhva's God, who is Viṣṇu, possesses transcendent attributes of creation, preservation, dissolution, control, enlightenment, obscuration, bondage, and release, and God himself is considered the cause of all causes productive of these results. Each individual self is by nature a reflection of God; however, no one is aware of this until, through study of the scriptures, he comes to understand his real nature, upon which he undertakes fervent devotion to the Lord, who responds by bestowing his grace upon the devotee according to the latter's capacity. The devotee then abides in a state of servitude to God forever, and this state constitutes his liberation.

Dvaita Vedānta is also known for its sophisticated analyses of matters pertaining to logic, epistemology, and metaphysics; many of these investigations were first raised in Madhva's writings.

The influence of Dvaita Vedānta has been felt throughout India, but most profoundly in the South. It has been claimed by some scholars that the direct influence of Madhva's thought played a part in the later development of Bengali Vaiṣṇavism. Certainly, later Dvaita writers were among the most formidable opponents of Advaita Vedānta, and these doctrinal differences led to the famous controversy between Vyāsatīrtha (1478–1539), the Dvaitin author of the Nyāyāmṛta, and Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (c. 1540–1600), author of the Advaitasiddhi, an extensive response to the Nyāyāmṛta and the most celebrated later work of Advaita polemics.

See Also

Vedānta.

Bibliography

A good overall introduction to the thought of Madhva is B. N. K. Sharma's A History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature, 2d rev. ed., 2 vols. (Bombay, 1981).

Karl H. Potter (1987)