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SrI:
SrImathE Gopaladesika mahadesikaya nama:

We had seen upto Swamy Desikan earlier: Let us enjoy
Swamy Desikan and post Desika period hereafter. 

The most significant development of Srivaishnavism
after Ramanuja period comes particularly from Swami
Nigamantha Mahadesikan, who is also known as
Venkatanatha [1268 CE- 1369 CE], an illustrious
successor to Bhagavad Ramanuja. Vedantha Desika is an
undisputed leader and master of Vedantha, logic,
prabandhams, verses, aesthetics, etc..  The dynamic
range of his works display his brilliance as a poet as
well as a scholar, a bhkatha, and a jnAna vairAgya
anushtAthA. He is one of the brightest stars in the
history of Vedantha. 

A mere glance at the list of his granthas [works]
which is more than 100 [as existing and some of his
works are also lost to posterity.]

Thus the second and more significant development of
Srivaishnavam in the post Ramanuja period comes from
Vedanta Desika, an illustrious successor to Ramanuja.
In fact, his advent marks an outstanding milestone in
the history of VisishtAdvaita Vedanta and Srivaishnava
sampradaya. He was an intellectual giant and as a
distinguished scholar of all branches of traditional
learning [sarvathanthra swathanthrar]. All his 100
plus works touched practically all aspects of Ramauja
darshanam and echo the preceptor?s views in fullest
entirety. He wrote in Sanskrit, in tamil and in
MaNipravalam style [mixture of both tamil and
Sanskrit]. After Sri Ramanuja, Sri Vedantha Desika
shone like a star of immense brilliance. 

Read here a brief biography of Swamy Desikan written
by Sri Mani Varadarajan USA, few years ago. 

Quote

Sri Vedanta Desika, greatest of philosophers after
Ramanuja and the whom we adore as "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.- Mani.

---
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.

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.  

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.
]

unquote
Swamy Desikan ThiruvaDigaLE SaraNam
Regards
Namo narayana
dasan




 
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