Sri Nigamanta Mahadesika: Biography

[Guest guest]

SrImAn venkatanAthAryaH kavitArkika kesarI |

vedAntAcArya-varyo me sannidhattAm sadA hRdi ||

 

May the glorious Venkatanatha, the greatest of

teachers of Vedanta, and the lion among poets and

debaters, reside forever in my heart.

 

Dear Sri Mani,

 

You have narrated very beautifully the biography of AchArya saarvabhoumar

Swamy Desikan. Swamy's works mark an outstanding milestone in the history of

Srivaishnavam.

 

Your mention of Paduka sahasram, composed by Swamy (presumably in the one

yaamam of night (4 hours??) is phenomenal. In fact, yesternight (on 21st),

adiyEn just attmepted reciting the Paduka sahasram first time (listening to

audio cassettes), and starting at 6.45 p.m, I could complete 1008 only at

12.45 midnight. It took six long hours for reading the Paduka sahasram and

IT TOOK SWAMY DESIKAN one yaamam for composing the 1008!! "oru jaaN

kattaiyil aayiram Ottai pOtta Thooppul PiLLaiyE PiLLai."

 

Tryly, An avtaar! VishNu gaNTaavataar!! Even reading the mere list of all

his works, takes about ten to fifteen minutes depending on how much twist

your tongue can take..

 

The brillinace, the depth of scholarship, the originality - simply

unmatched.. Anu doubt that may arise in us, at this age, has already been

covered by Swamy.. (somewhere in his works..).

 

Indeed, in the hands of Swamy Vedanta Desikan, Srivaishnavam, the doctrine

of Sri Bhagavadh Ramanuja, was further greatly strengthened and developed

beyond one's imagination.

 

Regards

 

Swamy Desikan ThiruvadigaLE SaraNam

 

Narayana Narayana

 

____

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[Guest guest]

SrImAn venkatanAthAryaH kavitArkika kesarI |

vedAntAcArya-varyo me sannidhattAm sadA hRdi ||

 

May the glorious Venkatanatha, the greatest of

teachers of Vedanta, and the lion among poets and

debaters, reside forever in my heart.

 

Fellow bhaktas, as we are well aware, today is the tirunakshatram

of Sri Vedanta Desika, greatest of philosophers after Ramanuja

and the whom we adore as *the* Vedantacharya. Many of you are already

aware of the details of his saintly life. However, since it is always

a source of inspiration to read how the great ones lived their lives,

especially our acharyas, I offer a brief biography below.

 

---

 

Sri Vedanta Desika was born in 1268 at Thooppul, a village near

Kanchipuram, to Totaramba and Ananta Suri. Both parents came

from very traditional Sri Vaishnava backgrounds; Ananta Suri was a

Vaidika Sri Vaishnava belonging to the Yajur Veda, and Totaramba

was the great-granddaughter of Kidambi Accan or Pranatartiharacharya,

Ramanuja's cook and one of his chief disciples. The day of Sri Desika's

birth happened to be purattaasi SravaNam, the tirunakshatram of Lord Srinivasa,

so accordingly his parents gave him the name "Venkatanatha". His titles

soon eclipsed his given name, however, and due to his mastery of Vedanta

and his ability to communicate complex topics easily, he is universally

known as Vedantacharya, Vedanta Desika, or simply Desika -- the teacher.

 

Vedanta Desika's maternal uncle was the renowned scholar Kidambi Appullaar,

also known as Atreya Ramanuja. It was under him that Desika

studied all the shastras. He writes that Appullaar taught him with

"as much patience as a man would teach a parrot to speak." Appullaar in

turn had studied Vedanta under Vatsya Varadacharya (popularly known as

Nadadur "Ammaal") along with Sudarsana Suri, the author of the Sruta-prakASikA,

the famed commentary on Ramanuja's Sribhashya.

 

Tradition records that at the age of five, Desika's precocious intelligence

Attracted the notice of Varadacharya himself. The latter blessed him and

predicted that he would be a great scholar, eventually firmly establishing

the greatness of Ramanuja's philosophy. The master's words proved prophetic.

Before the age of twenty, by his own account Desika had mastered all

branches learning current in his day, both religious and secular. In

particular, he had an uncanny ability to compose poetry instantaneously

that combined philosophy, emotion, and devotion. This combined with

his expertise at the art of debate earned him the title "Kavi Tarkika Simha",

or lion among poets and debaters.

 

One can easily trace Desika's life by looking at the stotras he

has composed. In examining the list of his Sanskrit and Tamil

poems, we find a large number dedicated to the deities in and

around Tiruvahindrapuram, a temple near the coastal town of Cuddalore.

It appears that shortly after his studies, Desika moved to Tiruvahindrapuram.

Always a devotee of Hayagriva Perumaal, the fount of all knowledge,

Desika meditated here on this form of the Lord and is said to have

had a profound vision of Him. Thereafter, he literally burst forth in

poetry. Works such as the Hayagriva Stotram, Raghu Vira Gadyam,

Gopala Vimsati (all in Sanskrit), Achyuta Satakam (in Prakrit),

Mummanikkovai and Navamani Maalai (in Tamil) are among his hymns

in praise of the deities enshrined here. These works are remarkable

for their poetic and linguistic range, as well as for their deeply

emotional turns. In his Tamil love poems to Lord Devanatha, for

example, the influence of the Alvars is transparent, as is his

mastery of the Sangam Tamil conventions. The rhythmic beauty

of the Raghu Vira Gadyam's prose and his touching descriptions

of the Krishna-lilas in the Gopala Vimsati are among the high

points of the entire gamut of India's religious literature.

 

[interested readers are invited to peruse these stotras at

http://www.ramanuja.org/sv/acharyas/desika/stotras ]

 

At some point, Desika returned to Kanchipuram to continue his

teaching and writing. He regularly visited the many Divya Desams

of this town, composing poems on nearly all of them. One of

them, the Vairagya Panchakam or "Five Verses on Dispassion", gives

us a rare autobiographical insight into his personality. Nominally

addressed to Lord Varadaraja, the Vairagya Panchakam is held to be

a reply to a friend, who, upon seeing Desika's abject poverty, invited

him to join the court of the king where he could lead a more

comfortable life. Desika's verses here display a stern

independence of spirit and utter disregard for material wealth,

particularly when it distracts from the greater wealth of the

company of God. Tradition remembers Desika and his wife as having

led an "unccha-vRtti" life, where he would daily go about begging

for alms. This is evidenced by his declaration at the conclusion

of the Vairagya Panchakam that neither he nor his father had any wealth

worth speaking of, save the continuous presence of the Lord of the

Elephant Hill, i.e., Lord Varadaraja.

 

Near the end of the 13th century, it is recorded that several

Advaitins came to Srirangam and challenged the Sri Vaishnavas

to a debate. Being advanced in age, Sudarsana Suri did not feel

up to the task, so the Sri Vaishnavas of Srirangam invited

Desika to take the challenge. He accepted the challenge and is

said to have vanquished his opponents, and thereafter took the

opportunity to settle down in Srirangam. Then, as now, Srirangam

was the center of Vaishnava culture, with very active participation

in religious dialogue and temple festivals. Desika no doubt

enjoyed his time in Srirangam very much. In the Bhagavad Dhyana

Sopanam, a contemplative poem on Lord Ranganatha, he describes

Srirangam as a place where "great connoisseurs live contentedly,

their minds full of delight".

 

At this point Desika was in his thirties, and his scholarly

achievements in the service of God were coming at an increasing

pace. He summarized his objections to Advaita in the polemic

work Satadusani; he clarified many aspects of Sri Vaishnava ritual

and practice; he constantly elucidated and clarified the philosophical

teachings of his predecessors. He himself writes that he taught the

entire Sribhashya at least thirty times; the bulk of these must have

occurred during his long stay in Srirangam. It is also during this

period that he wrote many of his "rahasya granthas", or expositions

of the more esoteric doctrines of the tradition, including the nature

of self-surrender (prapatti), the meaning of sacred mantras, etc.

 

Many of these works are clearly a product of long discussions

with senior scholars living in Srirangam at the time, such as

Pillai Lokacharya, Alagiya Manavaala Perumaal Naayanaar, and

Naayanaar Accan Pillai. Many of the thoughts of these other

acharyas are indirectly recorded in Desika's works, even when

they occasionally disagree with his conclusions. In this respect,

he was very much a scientist, carefully mentioning and arguing

all sides of an issue, before finally coming to what he saw was

the most logical conclusion. In examining these works as well

as his exhaustive commentaries on Ramanuja's and Alavandar's

compositions, one is struck by Desika's thoroughness, and by

his desire to discuss all possible meanings and nuances of an

interpretation, both in the course of anubhavam as well as

argument. Without Desika's careful noting of the variety of

interpretations, many important meanings would have been lost

to posterity. It is no wonder that the title of "Vedanta Desika"

was conferred on him, as he himself attests to, by Lord Ranganatha

Himself.

 

It is also in Srirangam that Desika composed the Paduka Sahasram,

1008 verses on the sandals of the Lord. It is said that Desika

composed the entire lot in a single night in response to challenge

from another pandit. In the course of the 32 paddhatis or chapters,

Desika makes countless allusions to the Alvars, to Sri Ramayanam

from which the idea of the greatness of the sandals nominally comes,

as well as other aspects of philosophy. The Paduka Sahasram has

been dealt with in detail by Sri Sadagopan so I will not delve into

this great topic further.

 

When Desika was in his forties, a son was born to him and his wife.

Reflecting his love for his household icon Lord Varadaraja Desika

named the boy Varada, and tradition remembers him as Nainacharya or

Kumara Varadacharya. Kumara Varadacharya also became a scholar of

some repute, and we are indebted to him for recording some biographical

details of his father in his Desika Mangalam, Pillai Antaadi, and

Desika Dinacharyai.

 

In 1327, during this fertile period of Sri Vaishnava scholarship and

growth, Malik Kafur invaded Srirangam from the north, with tragic

consequences of which many of us are aware. In the ensuing melee,

hundreds if not thousands of Sri Vaishnavas are said to have died,

and the very existence of Lord Ranganatha was threatened. Led by

Pillai Lokacharya, the seniormost acharya at the time, a group

of Sri Vaishnavas hurriedly left Srirangam with Namperumaal, the

Ranganatha utsava-mUrti, and headed to Jyotishkudi. There, an

exhausted Pillai Lokacharya breathed his last, unable to take the

stress of the invasion and journey. Meanwhile, the mUla-vigraham of

Ranganayaki Thaayaar was buried in the courtyard in front of Her

sannidhi, and Desika is said to have supervised the building of a wall

in front of the Ranganatha's sannidhi to hide the mUlavar. The aged

Sudarsana Suri was also among those who died during the invasion. Before

his death, he entrusted his two young sons and the only manuscript

of the Sruta-prakASikA to Desika's care. Desika, the boys, and others

hid themselves among the dead bodies to escape slaughter.

 

With the invasion of the temple came the need for Desika himself to

leave Srirangam, so he took his family and the sons of Sudarsana Suri

and headed northwest, settling down first in Satyamangalam, in present

day Karnataka. He then made his way to Melkote, where he attracted

a bright pupil, later known as Brahmatantra Svatantra Jiyar, the first

Swami of Sri Parakala Matham. From Melkote, Desika proceeded to

Tirupati/Tirumalai, where Namperumaal had eventually gone, and then to a

tour of North Indian divya desams, including Mathura, Brindavana, Ayodhya,

and Kashi. In the course of this long exile from Srirangam, seeing the

devastating destruction caused to the holiest of temples, Srirangam, he

composed the Abhiti Stava, or Prayer for Freedom From Fear. The Abhiti Stava

is a poetic request for protection from all unholy forces, particularly

those opposed to the Vaidika lifestyle involving service of the Lord which

Desika practiced. Desika was perhaps 60 or so during the composition of

this stotram, as he mentions that his hair has greyed by this time.

 

In 1360 [**], Gopanna Udaiyar defeated the Muslims, and Sri Vaishnavas

could once again return to Srirangam. Namperumaal was brought back

from Tirupati, and temple servants who had survived the 30+ long

temple closure were invited back. Sri Desika, as the senior surviving

acharya, was among those who returned, and a verse of his composition

is inscribed in the temple, recording his presence at the reopening of

Koyil. With the restoration of Srirangam, Desika now returned to his

service of Lord Ranganatha. Tradition records that he composed

Sri Rahasya Traya Saaram, an exhaustive work on the essence of

Sri Vaishnava philosophy, lifestyle, and the meaning of the esoteric

mantras, in these last few years of his life.

 

[**] Inscriptions indicate that the date was 1371 ("bandhupriya").

However, this has to be reconciled with the recorded date

of Desika's passing, 1369. Some historians believe the inscription

is in error and it should be "bahupriya", meaning 1360.

This is still a matter of research and debate.

 

In 1369, with his head resting in the lap of Kumara Varadacharya

and his feet with Brahmatantra Svatantra Jiyar, Desika left his earthly

body and ascended to Parama Padam. He had lived the full Vedic lifespan

of 100 years in an exemplary and humble manner, tirelessly engaged in

the service of the Lord and Sri Ramanuja's sampradAya. Even given

such a long life, one can hardly imagine how someone can have contributed

so much with so much consistency, and yet have lived such a simple

life of complete poverty. For these reasons, Sri Desika forever won

the admiration and reverence of all who where spiritually inclined,

and is rightfully recognized as one of the foremost scholars and

thinkers ever alive.

 

kavi-tArkika-simhAya kalyANa-guNa-SAline |

Srimate venkateSAya vedAntagurave namaH ||

 

Salutations to Sri Venkatesa, in whom all perfections reside,

who is the teacher of Vedanta and the lion among poets

and debaters!

 

---

 

[ Note: For brevity's sake, there are many more details of Desika's

life and works which have not been mentioned. Many volumes

can be written on the subject. ]

[Guest guest]

Dear BhaghavatAs:

 

I have read many biographies of Swami Desika, but this one by Mani excels

them all. Indeed a great gift to all of us on Swami's tirunakshatram. We

are blessed to be gifted with such talents.

 

I have a request to make. Mani, can you fill in the rest of the details in

your article (eventhough it is complete by itself). I have a frind who is

ready to fund the publication of a small booklet on Desika carrying your

article(1000 copies to begin with). Thanks.

 

It will greatly help in the education of our children if similar articles

are written on other great achAryas.

 

Vijayaraghavan

Buffalo, NY

>Mani Varadarajan <mani

>bhakti

>Sri Nigamanta Mahadesika: Biography

>Tue, 21 Sep 1999 19:05:18 -0700 (PDT)

>

>

> SrImAn venkatanAthAryaH kavitArkika kesarI |

> vedAntAcArya-varyo me sannidhattAm sadA hRdi ||

>

 

____

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[Guest guest]

At 07:05 PM 9/21/99 -0700, you wrote:

>

> SrImAn venkatanAthAryaH kavitArkika kesarI |

> vedAntAcArya-varyo me sannidhattAm sadA hRdi ||

>

> May the glorious Venkatanatha, the greatest of

> teachers of Vedanta, and the lion among poets and

> debaters, reside forever in my heart.

 

Dear Sri Mani Varadarajan :

 

You have touched my heart with the most beautiful

summary of Swami Sri Desikan's Life and works .

It is one of the brilliantly assembled biography .

I agree that one can write many volumes , but ,

this succinct biography would be of great help

to a lot of BhakthAs .

 

With your permission , I would like to include it in

my newly created Home Pages for Swami Sri Desikan

created yesterday on our AchAryA's birthday .

 

Swami DSesikan ThiruvadigaLE SaraNam ,

V.Sadagopan

>

>

[Guest guest]

That was a wonderful and indeed inspiring synopsis of

Sri Desikar's life.

 

Now I have a question re Sri Desikar's successors -

what might be called a genealogical question. Did Sri

NainArAchAryar have a son or did Sri Desikar himself

have male relatives on his father's line?

 

In other words, is there a vamsAvaLi of Sri Desikar

available down to the present day? I have seen one of

Sri EngaL ALvAn who is Sri NaDAdur AmmAL's acharya.

 

I would appreciate any pointers that the bhaktas may

choose to provide.

 

Thanks and Warm Regards,

 

LS

[Guest guest]

Dear Mani

The entire Srivaishnava community is deeply indebted to you for the lucid

exposition of the story and glory of the greatest Acharyan of our

Sampradayam, Swami Sri Nigamanta Desikan. This perhaps is the best, short and

sweet offering on our Acharya, I have read so far. Thanks a million.

Dasoham

Anbil Ramaswamy