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CHAPTER XXV MADHVA AND HIS SCHOOL
Madhva's Life. BHANDARKAR in Vaišnavism, Saivaism and Minor Religious Systems says that in the Mahābhārata-tātparya-nirnaya, Madhva has given the date of his birth as Kali 4300. The Kali age, according to Bhāskarācārya, begins with the year 3101 B.C. The date of Madhva's birth would thus be A.D. 1199 or 1121 saka, Bhandarkar says that, as some use the current year of an era and some the past, the saka era 1121 may be regarded as equivalent to 1119. But the present writer has not been able to discover it in the only printed edition of the text of Mahābhārata-tātparya-nirnaya (1833 saka, published by T. R. Krsnācārya). Bhandarkar, however, approaches the problem by another path also. He says that the list preserved in several of the Mathas gives the date of Madhva as saka 1119, and, as Madhva lived for 79 years, the date of his birth was 1040 saka. Bhandarkar, however, regards saka 1119 as the date of his birth, and not of his death as given in the Matha list. He says that the inscription in the Kūrmeśvara temple at Srikūrma is in a Tāluka of the Ganjam district in which Narahari-tirtha is represented to have constructed a temple and placed in it an idol of Narasimha dated śaka 1203 (Epigraphica Indica, Vol. vi, p. 260). The first person therein mentioned is Purusottama-tīrtha, who is the same as Acyutaprekșa, then his pupil Ananda-tīrtha, then Narahari-tīrtha, the pupil of Ananda-tīrtha. Narahari-tīrtha was probably the same as Narasimha, the ruler of the Tāluk mentioned above, from saka 1191 to 1225. He is mentioned in inscriptions at Srīkūrman bearing the date śaka 1215, which is represented as the eighteenth year of the king's reign. He was Narasimha II, who was panegyrized in the Ekāvalī. From other inscriptions we get Narahari's date as between 1186 and 1212 šaka. These records confirm the tradition that Narahari-tirtha was sent to Orissa by Ananda-tīrtha. Now Naraharitīrtha's active period ranged between 1186 to 1215. His teacher Madhva could not have died in saka1119, i.e. sixty-seven years before him. Bhandarkar therefore takes 1119(as mentioned in the Matha list)
