Any modern-minded young Sri Vaishnava today, wishing to know about the historical background of his community and its culture, will hardly be able to find anywhere such a thing as an authentic and objective record of a common, consistent and credible history of the “ubaya-vedaantins”.
What he or she however will instead come across aplenty will be legendary accounts, hagiographical apocrypha, “puraana-like” tales and confusing historical narratives that would seem they have been woven around hearsay. Much of it would be marked clearly by narrow parochial slant and sectarian overtones.
One of the main reasons, amongst many other, why jarring dissonances have crept into such narratives of the Tenkalai and Vadakalai groups even in present-day Sri Vaishnava society, is because they are intended not so much to serve as dispassionate record of events as they are to prove the story of one side to be right and discredit the other version of it. Over the centuries, it is because such dissonant narratives have been given credence within the community that the true history of the “ubaya vedaantins” has got lost in the fog of competitive narrative-building.
The tendency to competitive narrative-building often arises out of a lack of awareness of the historical “big picture”. The Tenkalai and Vadakalai sects are so narrowly focused and fixated on reaffirming, reinforcing, reinventing and rehashing their own narrow and self-serving narrative about themselves and their roots that they lose all sight of the major events that happened during the common history of South India whose children they are. They choose then to benignly ignore the huge impact they know such overarching events of their common past have actually had on the birth and fate of the “ubaya vedaantins“, their behavioral psychology and their societal responses to the larger — larger-than-life, in fact –political churning and revolutions that had occurred all around them….. in and around both the capital temple-towns, Kanchipuram in the north and Sri Rangam in the south and everywhere in between….. for well over 400 years!
The history of South India from the time of Sri Ramanuja (11th century CE) right up to Indian Independence in 1947 shows that the great tradition of “ubaya-vedaantham” of the Sri Vaishnavas could not have risen at all to the meteoric glory it did without, in large part, to the advent and rule of the great Vijayanagar Dynasties. It also shows that the decline of the great spiritual empires of Kanchipuram and Sri Rangam began to unravel in slow motion at the very same time and pace as the Vijayanagara Empire when it began to fall apart….. from late 15th century CE to about the end of the 17th century CE when it finally disappeared.
In other words, little is it appreciated by either Sri Vaishnava sect that its religious faith and traditions, its institutional and cultural ecosystem all owed their strength, sustenance and survival, to a very large extent, to the patronage and munificent contributions of the Vijayanagar Dynasty. The lives and careers of several generations of the Thaathachaarya family in Kanchipuram and of the Utthama Nambi family in Sri Rangam — which having been already described in earlier pages — bear ample testimony indeed to this undeniable fact.
Very little of a larger, holistic perspective — or a true understanding of how such a perspective ought to shape and inform the telling of historical narratives — is ever to be found than in the way the Sri Vaishnavas of today recall their collective communal memory, Nor is it evident in the way they are able to present a credible and cogent account of how the sectarian rift between them came about in the first place and then grew…. when and why…..
The failure to appreciate the “bigger picture” about themselves is because they are half-blind to the realization that what really bound them together in the past throughout the brief history of glory and grandeur of the Vijayanagar Empire was a common and undivided sense of identity as “ubaya-vedaantins” minus which the Kings of those times would have found no compelling cause to patronize and support them.
It is that very failure — a congenital collective disability perhaps — which is the single most important cause for all the petty rancor, mean-spirited resentment, divisions and simmering tensions that have come to ail and plague mutual Tenkalai-Vadakalai relations even today….. seen inside quite a few of their temples, between their “muttams” or “ashrams” and indeed across the full spectrum of religious intercourse and discourse of what they take pride in believing is their respective “sampradaayam”.
*******************************
One of the most mystifying and bewildering of both Tenkalai and Vadakalai narratives is that the historical person whom they each venerate as prime and foremost Achaarya (prathamaachaarya) of their sect, Sri Manavaala Maamuni (1370-1450 CE) and Sri Vedanta Desikan (1268-1369 CE) respectively, were antagonistic to each other!
It is an absurd narrative!
Yet it survives to this very day and we can see it play out in sometimes in as ugly — and many times as silly– a manner possibly imaginable in temples of Vishnu belonging to the Tenkalai or Vadakalai sect.
For example, in the Tenkalai Vishnu temple, there will be found no separate shrine (sannidhi) maintained for Swami Desikan and vice versa too. If there is however such a shrine to be found, one can be sure that it will willfully and spitefully be kept in the most piteous, neglected and unkempt state and condition. No proper or regular ceremonial worship will be conducted to Swami Desikan inside a Tenkalai temple and the same short shrift one would find be given to Sri Manavaala Maamuni sannidhi inside a Vadakalai Vishnu temple. A true-blue Vadakalai will baulk at observing liturgical praise of Manavaala Maamuni; and, in turn, a dyed-in-wool Tenkalai will not genuinely care to join in the singing of the religious verses (stotras) of Desikan. Insults galore, both overt and covert, one will find would be freely exchanged between the die-hard sections of the two sects just to show to the other what they really think of each other’s “prathamaachaarya“.
The Desikan-Manavaala Maamuni antipathy is nothing but a mythical creation of recent times — say, since the late 18th century or early 19th century CE. In truth, however, what one lived for as a preceptor and taught or propagated as “raamaanuja siddhaantha” was never an antithesis of the other.
One hundred years separated the lifetimes of the two spiritual preceptors, making them belong, in fact, to two completely different generational eras in the history of South India. Their thinking, outlook and mind-sets were conditioned differently — as both philosopher and religious Achaarya.
Swami Desikan belonged to the post-Sri Ramanuja era — a time in history that witnessed and experienced the trauma of rapid decline in the fortunes of Hindu kingdoms of the Cholas and Pandyas.
It was also tumultuous times of frequent war and invasions. Two of the very first, longest and bloodiest series of Islamic invasions of Tamil country took place around this same time — first by Allauddin Khilji in 1296 CE who later left it to his general, Malik Kafur to continue the depredations all across South India from c. 1311 CE to 1327 CE when the Sri Rangam temple was sacked, plundered, looted and desecrated. Swami Desikan himself providentially escaped death along with another priestly and scholar colleague of his (i.e. Sri Pillai Lokachariar, who later came to be so-called as the inspirational schismatic leader of the “tennaachaarya” branch of Sri Vaishnavas) and had to flee Sri Rangam and live in exile near Melkote (Tirunaaryaanapuram) . He did not return to Sri Rangam until c. 1365 CE …. at the ripe old age of 97…. (a fleeting glimpse of Swami Desikan’s tribulations during this time can be gleaned in one famous verse in his Sanskrit stotra composed then viz.: the “abheethi stavam“).
Simply by studying a most telling historical map below of those times, one can easily imagine the raging tempers, social upheavals and political disruptions of the troubled times in which Swami Desikan lived and survived.
In sharp contrast, Sri Manavaala Maamuni lived in a different era altogether.
During his lifetime there was, in fact, a brief but marked recovery and spectacular revival of the Hindu ethos and Hindu cultural renaissance thanks largely to the rise and consolidation of the power of the first of the Vijayanagar Dynasts Bukka and Harihara who had already, by the time of the birth of Sri Manavaala Maamuni, laid the foundation for their empire in 1336 CE. Bukka’s rule lasted until 1377 CE. And his son Harihara-II’s rule lasted from 1377-1404 CE. Then came the rule of Devaraya I who reigned from 1406 CE to 1422 CE. In 1426 CE the great Devraya-II ascended the throne of Vijayanagar to preside over a long and prosperous period of history until his death in 1446 CE. Between 1446 CE and 1485 CE, there was prolonged internal strife amongst the princelings and heirs of the Vijayanagar dynasts during the time of Virupaksha-II. Finally it was only in 1509 CE, after long and bitter royal power-struggles within the different branches of the Vijayanagar families, that the greatest of all the Raaya kings, Krishnadevaraaya ascended the throne and heralded the greatest period of glory and prosperity in the history of Hindu India. — 1509 to 1529 CE.
From the cursory survey of the above period in history, it would not be inaccurate to say that Swami Desikan lived in pessimistic times that suffered the trauma of great political upheavals that had resulted from relentless barbarian invasions all across the lands where “ubaya vedaantins” had lived. Sri Manavaala Muni, on the other hand, lived at a time of general Hindu optimism, when Hindu rebuilding and Hindu renaissance was made possible under relatively stable and peaceful political conditions provided by the Vijayanagar kings. (During this period the Islamic dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate had largely left South India and were more preoccupied with fighting wars against their northern adversaries who were growing threats to them from two separate corners of India — the Bahamani dynasts of Bijapur and the Rajput Kings from the north-western provinces… see map above).
A modern British historian (John Keay: “India: A History” – 2010) has written this about the Vijayanagar Empire:
“….The kingdom has been seen as the epitome of traditional Indian kingship and a spectacular finale to the two thousand years of Hindu empire. It stood for the older religion and culture of the country and saved these from being engulfed by the rush of new ideas and forces’. It was also the “last bastion of Hinduism”; and when it fell , the South died”….. The Kingdom has often been seen as a natural and climactic reordering of the ideals and achievements of all those earlier (Hindu) Deccan dynasties — the Shatavaahanas and Vakaatakas, Chalukyas and Raashtrakutas. In particular, the earliest Chalukyas seem to have inspired the kings of Vijayanagar, who modelled some of their temples on those of Badami and Aihole….”.
Prof. K.A.Nilakanta Sastri, the author of the authoritative book “A History of South India”, in the same context, has written thus that it was during the reign of the kings of this period that “…...(Hindu) kings succeeded in firmly establishing authority of Vijayanagar all over the country; there was no thought of revolt and no great discontent anywhere within … (the) vast realm….” and also that “Munificent gifts to all the important shrines of South India, such as Rameshwaram, Sri Rangam, Kumbakonam, Chidambaram, Sri Sailam, Kanchipuram, Kaalahaasti, Mahaanandi and Gokarna, are recorded in (their name) in the inscriptions of those times…..”
The Vijayanagar Empire thus was an out-and-out Hindu revivalist dynasty. It traced its roots in history to a great Sanskritic past. It provided support to Saivism, Smartha, Sakta and even Jain faiths, sects and religious institutions because it derived its legitimacy, strength and popular Hindu mandate from them.
*********************************
It is against the macrocosmic backdrop of Hindu revivalism, thus, that had been taking place in the larger political landscape of South India at the time of Sri Manavaala Maamuni — as described above — that the Tenkalai narrative of present times detailing the history of the local, microcosmic landscape at Sri Rangam is found to be woven. The narrative is unmistakably biased and pre-disposed towards juxtaposing Swami Desikan’s times along with Sri Manavaalamuni’s own times to present them both as though they were proponents or champions of a Vadakalai and Tenkalai school of “ubaya vedaantic” tradition of thought, theology and religious practice that were antithetical to each other.
Such a juxtaposed narrative is patently absurd and false. A 100 years apart under two entirely different kingly eras, living through times of widespread war, serial invasions, mass destruction, death and disruptions, it is impossible, nay, even preposterous to imagine that Swami Desikan and Sri Pillai Lokachariar’s acolytes and Sri Manavaala Maamuni’s band of disciples and laity, would have found either the time, inclination or resources to think up, propagandize and engage in the petty polemics of creating a sectarian divide between the “ubaya-vedaantins” of Sri Rangam and Kanchipuram variants of theology, between Vedic and so-called Dravida-Vedic ethos, and between Tamizh and Sanskritic linguistic traditions….
However, it is precisely such specious narratives that have come to pollute, bedevil and plague the sectarian fault-line between Tenkalai and Vadakalai today.
(to be continued)
Sudarshan Madabushi