
MADHVACARYA
                          
    For twelve years Madhyageha Bhatta would regularly travel the eight miles
north from his village of Belle to Udupi. There at the Anantesvara temple he
would pray for a son. One day a devotee in a trancelike state climbed the
temple flagpole and announced that to reestablish the purest principles of
religion, a male child, an incarnation of Vayu, the demigod in charge of air,
would soon be born. Madhyageha understood within his heart that this would be
his own child. Soon his wife, Vedavati, gave birth to a son. The happy couple
named him Vasudeva.

    From infancy Vasudeva showed extraordinary intellect, so much so that he
was given brahminical initiation at age five, three years early. Whatever he
heard or read, even just once, he could remember. His body was unusually
strong, lustrous, and beautiful. At age eleven, Vasudeva left home for Udupi,
to live with Acyutapreksa, an ascetic widely respected for his scholarship and
saintly character. After one year, despite strong protests from his father,
Vasudeva renounced the world. Acyutapreksa named him Purnaprajna.

    Less than forty days after taking sannyasa, Purnaprajna defeated Vasudeva
Pandita, a famous wandering scholar, in public debate. The pandita was known
for his hair-splitting dialectical ability, but he was no match for the young
Purnaprajna. The pandita spoke for three days and then dared anyone to refute
his conclusions. Purnaprajna shocked the crowd when he accepted the challenge.
First, to show he had a full grasp of the issues, he repeated almost verbatim
the pandita's arguments. Then, one by one, he smashed them all. His victory
was the talk of Udupi. Acyutpreksa gave him the title Anandatirtha, in
recognition of his mastery of Vedanta.

    Word spread far and wide about the debating skill of the young ascetic in
Udupi. Challengers and admirers converged on the town. Buddhisagara and
Vadisimha, two Buddhist monks who had converted many to their fold, challenged
Anandatirtha. After a day-long skirmish, they promised to return the next day.
That night, however, they secretly fled from Udupi.

    Anandatirtha went on a tour of South India. The most notable events on
this tour were two encounters with Vidyasankara Swami, the lineal successor to
Sripad Sankaracarya, who was the original propounder of the monistic theory of
the Absolute Truth. Some basic tenets of Sankaracarya's philosophy are as
follows: God and the soul are identical; the formless, senseless, impersonal
Absolute is the only reality; all else is illusion; and the incarnations of
God are all products of illusion. Anandatirtha was toughly familiar with this
philosophy, so he knew all its weak points. With firmness and courage he
challenged the venerated Vidyasankara, and a fierce debate ensued.
Vidyasankara could not defeat his opponent, yet he refused to accept defeat.
They met again, in Ramesvaram, during the monsoon season, at which time
Vidyasankara taunted and harassed Anandatirtha. But the young saint tolerated
the abuse.

    On his return journey, while addressing an assembly of learned men,
Anandatirtha stated that every Vedic utterance conveyed a triple meaning, that
each verse of the Mahabharata had ten meanings, and that each of the thousand
prominent names of Lord Visnu had a hundred meanings. When the astonished
assembly demanded he prove his statement, Anandatirtha explained a hundred
meanings of Visva, the first name of Visnu. Before he could proceed further,
however, they begged him to stop, admitting they did not have the intelligence
to comprehend his elaborate explanations.

    Back in Udupi, Anandatirtha, who was now known as Madhva, wrote a
commentary on Bhagavad-gita and gave a copy to Acyutapreksa for his approval.

    Madhva's next tour was to Badarinatha, high in the Himalayas. In
Badarinatha he met Srila Vyasadeva, the author of the four Vedas and their
voluminous supplementary literature. In preparation for this meeting, Madhva
had observed complete silence and complete fasting for forty-eight days. He
learned the full meaning of the Vedanta-sutra, the distilled essence of the
Vedic wisdom, from the transcendental author himself and promised to write a
commentary on the sutras, one that would be faithful to Srila Vyasadeva's
original intent and purport. By the time he came down from the Himalayas, his
commentary, Sutra-bhasya, was completed. He sent a copy ahead to Udupi for
Acyutapreksa's approval.

    On his return trip, Srila Madhvacarya converted Sobhana Bhatta and Sami
Sastri to Vaisnavism. They later became successors to Madhva, as Padmanabha
Tirtha and Narahari Tirtha. Madhva refused to let Narahari take sannyasa,
ordering him to remain in his high government position, in return for which he
was to obtain the Deities of Mula Rama and Sita, lying in the King of
Kalinga's treasury. For many years Narahari remained in that service, until
finally, just three months before Madhva's departure from this world, Narahari
brought the ancient images of Sita-Rama to his guru. These were the original
Deities of Rama and Sita, worshiped by Maharaja Iksvaku and then by Maharaja
Dasaratha, the father of Lord Rama. Then during the time of Lord Krsna's
advent, the Pandavas gave them to the Gajapati kings of Orissa. Eventually the
Deities were kept in the kings' treasury.

    While still in his twenties, Srila Madhvacarya undertook a second tour to
Badarinatha, this one after he had founded Sri Krsna Matha in Udupi. On the
way, a tyrannical king pressed Madhva's party into digging a reservoir for the
city of Devagiri. Madhva, however, persuaded the king himself to take part in
the digging and then left with his party. The pilgrims had many other
hardships and adventures, but Madhva always saved them with his quick thinking
and mystic powers. In Badarinatha, Madhva again heard from Vyasa, who gave him
eight sacred Salagrama stones.

    On the return trip Madhva stopped in Goa, where he enacted an amazing
gastronomical feat. Previously he had eaten a thousand bananas in one sitting.
But in Goa, he outdid his earlier record. He ate four thousand bananas and
then drank thirty pots of milk. When asked to prove that plants indeed respond
to music, Madhva took a few seeds in his hand and began singing in his
melodious voice. The seeds sprouted, Madhva continued singing, and the plants
grew, swaying to the melody. Madhva continued singing. The plants grew into
full maturity and yielded fruits and flowers. News of this feat spread
everywhere.

    From Udupi Madhva travelled south again. In Visnumangalam he debated with
Trivikramacarya, a logician and grammarian of remarkable skill, who was able
to make the Sanskrit language convey any meaning that suited his purpose. The
debate lasted fifteen days, and in the end Trivikrama surrendered at Madhva's
feet. A full account of that debate is given the Madhva-vijaya, written by the
son of Trivikramacarya. News of Trivikrama's conversion brought hundreds more
men and women into Madhva's fold. His life's mission thus became firmly rooted
in India.

    Srila Madhvacarya wrote thirty-nine books clarifying the tenets of
Vaisnavism and showing Vaisnavism to be the true Vedic religion. In many of
his works he attacked the monistic creed of Sankaracarya's followers, exposing
their doctrine as subversive to genuine spiritual understanding. Unable to
defeat Madhva by argument, certain groups of monists conspired to impede
Madhva's mission by less honourable means. They tried to defame him, declaring
him to be a heretic and all his followers outcastes. They even stole his
writings and his valuable collection of ancient books, thinking that without
literature his mission would be finished. Somehow, King Jaya Simha of
Visnumangalam acquired the books and returned them to Madhvacarya.

    Madhva had appeared in two other incarnations. During the time of Lord
Krsna's appearance on the earth he appeared as the warrior Bhima, one of the
five Pandava brothers. During the time of Lord Rama, he incarnated as the
beloved Hanuman, the ideal servant of the Supreme Lord. And, as in those
incarnations, Madhva performed many feats of strength and displayed mystical
perfections. As a child he would appear suddenly in one mighty leap from
anywhere in response to his mother's call. In school he cured a friend's
headache by blowing into his ear. To help his father out of debt he turned
tamarind seeds into money. On two occasions he made seeds sprout into plants
by singing. An enormous rock in Ambu Tirtha, requiring at least fifty men to
move it, bears an inscription stating that Madhvacarya placed it there with
one hand. Many times Madhva made small quantities of food increase for
distribution to hundreds of people. At the age of seventy-nine, his mission
well established, Srila Madhvacarya passed away. His devotees say he went to
Badarinatha to join Srila Vyasadeva.

