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54
Madhva and his School
[CH. eleventh and the thirteenth chapters of the Madhva-vijaya we read the story of the persecution of Madhva by Padma-tīrtha, the head of the Sệngeri monastery, who tried his best to obstruct the progress of the new faith initiated by Madhva and even stole away Madhva's books, which were, however, returned to him through the intercession of the local Prince Jayasimha of Vişnumangala; the faith continued to grow, and Trivirama Pandita, the father of Nārāyana Bhatta, the author of Mani-mañjarī and Madhva-vijaya, and many other important persons were converted to the Madhva faith. In his last years Madhva again made a pilgrimage to the North and is said to have rejoined Vyāsa, and to be still staying with him. He is said to have lived for seventy-nine years and probably died in 1198 saka or A.D. 1276. He was known by various names, such as Pūrņaprajña, Ananda-tīrtha, Nandi-tīrtha and Vāsudeva'.
The treatment of the philosophy of Madhva which is to follow was written in 1930; and so the present writer had no opportunity of diving into Mr Sarma's excellent work which appeared some time ago, when the manuscript of the present work was ready for the Press. Padmanabhasura's Madhva-siddhānta-sāra contains a treatment of Madhva's doctrines in an epitomized form. Madhva wrote thirty-seven works. These are enumerated below?;
(1) The Rg-bhāsya a commentary to the Rg-veda, 1. 1-40; (2) The Krama-nirnaya, a discussion on the proper reading and
1 A few works in English have appeared on Madhva. The earliest accounts are contained in "Account of the Madhva Gooroos" collected by Major VacKenzie, 24 August 1800, printed on pp. 33 ff. of the "Characters" in the
Asiatic Annual Register, 1804 (London, 1806); H. H. Wilson's "Sketch of the religious sects of the Hindus," reprinted from Vols, xvi and xvii of Asiatic Researches, London, 1861, 1, pp. 139 ff.; Krishnaswami Aiyar's Sri Madhva and lladhvaism, Madras; R. G. Bhandarkar's Vaişnavism, Saivaism and Minor Religious Systems; Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. XXII, "Dharwar," Bombay, 1884; G. Venkoba Rao's “A sketch of the History of the Maddhva Achāryas," beginning in Indian Antiquary, XLIII (1914), and C. M. Padmanābhacārya's Life of Madhvācārya. S. Subba Rao has a complete translation of the commentary of Sri Madhvācārya on the Brahma-sūtra and a translation in English of the Bhagavad-gitā with the commentary according to Sri Madhvācārya's Bhāşya. The preface of this Bhagatad-gitā contains an account of Madhva's life from an orthodox point of view. There is also P. Ramchandra Roo's The Brahma Sutras, translated literally according to the commentary of Sri Madhvācārya (Sanskrit, Kumbakonam, 1902); G. A. Grierson has a very interesting article on Vadhva in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VIII; Mr Nägarāja Sarma has recently published a recondite monograph on the philosophy of Madhva.
? See Helmuth von Glasenapp's Madhvas Philosophie des Vishnu-Glaubens, p. 13.
