The Tenkalai narrative about how the Kanchipuram Sri Devarajaswamy Perumal temple in the 15th century came to be owned and protected by members of their sect begins with the introduction of one of their most venerated Acharyas. His name was Sri Azhagiya Manavaala Jiyar. Who was he? A website http://koyil.org/index.php/vadhikesariazhagiyamanavalajiyarmutt/ provides a brief hagiography ofContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya-vedaantins” – Part 7″
Tag Archives: Tenkalai
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya-vedaantins” – Part 6
The narrative of the Tenkalai sect with regard to their claim to legitimacy in asserting that the Kanchi Varadaraja Temple belongs — lock, stock and barrel — to their “sampradaaya“, tradition and custom is based mostly on the version of 15th-16th century CE history that they have constructed and posit. The Vadakalai sect, however, onContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya-vedaantins” – Part 6″
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 5
The history of the whole world tells us clearly that at the root of all great human conflicts is the inability of Man to know Truth first and to then Reconcile himself to it. Conflicts arise and continue to fester and outrage us only because one side of the conflict believes its version of TruthContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 5”
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 3
Edmund Burke, the 18th century CE British Parliamentarian once made a statement echoing a dictum made at least 3000 years before him by Sage Manu in India. Burke said: “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors”. And Sage Manu had pronounced the very same truth but differently: (Manu-neethiContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 3″
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 8
In the broad narrative of the Vadakalai sect, the events of 14th-16th century CE history that led to its claiming primacy, ownership, control, legitimacy — and of contributions made to the construction, maintenance and administration of the Kanchipuram Sri Varadaraja Perumal Temple — most prominently feature Sri Lakshmi Kumara Thathachariar, aka Sri Lakshmi Kumara ThathaContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 8”
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 4
It was during the period after the Vijayanagar Empire fell — and its vassal kingdoms in Tamil Nadu dissolved too and disappeared eventually– that the differences and distinctions between North/South, Kanchipuram/Sri Rangam, Sanskrit/Tamil and the Tenkalai/Vadakalai identities became increasingly pronounced in the “ubaya vedanta” fold. In the SriRangam region, a galaxy of scholars from theContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 4″
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 2
The 2022 fracas between the Tenkalai and Vadakalai groups of Sri Vaishnavas at Kanchipuram is only the latest of dozens more of the past which are far bitterer — and equally petty-minded — than similar sectarian spats that occurred and grabbed news headlines over the last 200 years in Tamil Nadu. India is a vastContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 2″
The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 1
The 2022 Annual “Brahmothsavam Festival” of the famous Sri Varadaraja Perumal Temple at Kanchipuram has been been celebrated this fortnight with tumultuous popular fanfare, piety, ardor and religious exuberance. It climaxed in the great “Garuda Seva” procession of the Deity through the streets of the town where hundreds of thousands of devotees from all allContinue reading “The Decline and Fall of the “ubaya vedaantins” – Part 1″