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No. 3.] SRIRANGAM PLATES OF MUMMADI NAYAKA: SAKA SAMVAT 1280. 87
His son was Vedavyasa alias Sudarsana Bhatta. He studied the Srtbhashya at Kañchi under Varadavishṇvarya, the grandson of Naḍādür Älvän (a nephew of Rāmānuja). Varadavishnu was better known as Naḍādür-ammal. He was a great exponent of the Sribhashya, and his learning drow many earnest students to Kanchi. One such was Vedavyāsa Bhaṭṭa. This youth's unostentatious manners, his typical silence and apparent unsociability made him mistaken for a dullard. His colleagues could not perceive that all his thoughts were concen. trated on his study and that he found little or no time for idle talk with them. But his teacher knew him very well. One day, when the students were assembled for the usual lecture, Naḍādür Ammal, who had also come early, would not proceed with his disquisition. He began it only after Vědavyasa Bhaṭṭa took his seat in the assembly. With a desire to show the real man to the audience, Ammal feigned forgetfulness in the matter of an explanation which he had given some time back and asked each one of his students about it, but did not succeed in eliciting a reply; when Vedavyasa's turn came, he requested his acharya to command him to give the interpretation as given by him (the acharya) on any one particular occasion; for he had heard Ammal twenty-one times. When questioned if he remembered the very language employed by Ammal on those twenty-one occasions, he replied that he did. At the command of Amma he began to pour forth in the very language in which Ammal had explained that particular point on so many previous occasions. The fellow disciples of Vedavyasa were dismayed at this extraordinary performance of the apparent dullard, and began to feel ashamed of themselves. As a matter of fact, this youth committed to memory every word of Ammal, as it fell from his lips, and reduced it to writing the very same evening after the lecture was over. The work that grew in this manner was called the Śruta-prakäsikä, and Sudarsana came to be known thenceforth by the name of Srutaprakäsikacharya. He was an elder contemporary of Venkatanatharya, alias Vedanta-desika. When he was very old, the vandalistic march of Malık Kafur swept over Srirangam, and in the onslaught that took place he perished.3
Sudarsana Bhaṭṭa had two sons, Vêdacharya Bhaṭṭa and Parasara Bhaṭṭa. Before his death Sudarsana Bhatta entrusted these sons and his valuable work the Sruta-prakāsikā to the care of Vedanta-desika with the request that they might be saved from the Musalman havoc. The latter carried out his promise so faithfully that to-day we owe the existence of this valuable
1 "Nos. 4714 and 5056 contain the Vasanta-tilaka-bhānam, a drama by Varadacharya. This author can be safely identified with the Vaishnava teacher of the same name, who was the son of Devaraja of Kanchi, and to whom the Guruparampara-prabhavam attributes the two surnames Ammälädhärys and Ghatikagatam-ammal. The first of these two names appears in the form Ambalacharys in No. 5956, and a corruption of the second name is preserved in the colophop of Dr. R. Mitra's No. 116" .. "Another drama by Varadaçbarys is the Chola-bhana." Rep. on Sans. MSS. in 8. India by Dr. E. Hultzsch, No. I, p. vii of the Introductiba,
* श्रीवत्सास्य नप्तारं पौत्रं रामविपश्चितः ।
व्यांसं वाग्जयिनः पुवमस्माकं तातमाश्रयै ॥ यतीन्द्रकृतभाष्यार्था यद्याख्यानेन दर्शिताः ।
दाम् । गुरुप्रकाममहार्य चौरामा पौचकम् ।
बाबिजयगुरोः पुत्रं बन्दे सहुचसागरम् । 3 भाष्यमकाधिकां तो संङटकाले सुदर्शनसूरिः । verad fefeft.
Vidäntadesika-vaibhava-prakäsikä, v. 131. 4 श्री पराशर महायें श्रीवत्साप्रपोजवम् । मेदाचार्या वेदाचार्यस्य नन्दनम्
