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Om Vishnupad 108 Tridandi Swami Sri Srimat Bhakti Sravan Tirtha Goswami Maharaj ki Jai !!

(Sourced from Madhva Vijaya)

 

Jagatguru Srila Madhvacharya was born around 1238 A.D. eight miles south-east of the modern town of Udupi, in the southern coastal state of Karnataka. He is considered to be an incarnation of Bhima (or Hanuman), taking birth in the age of Kali to defeat atheists. Others refer to him as the avatar of Vayu dev, the deity of the wind.

Madhva was born in the family of learned brahmanas and from his early childhood performed many amazing pastimes, such as the killing of a huge serpentine demon named Maniman, simply with the big toe of his left foot.

Madhva enjoyed a long life of robust health. He engaged in various forms of sport and feats of strength in his youth, such as wrestling, swimming and even mountaineering, which he kept up to the very end. He had very handsome features with a strong muscular frame, tall and strong-limbed with graceful carriage and dignified bearing. Endowed with a magnetic personality and traditional 32 lakshanas, he had a deep sonorous voice and excellent musical talent, which he used to advantage in Vedic recitation and in singing his own devotional compositions and in giving discourses on the Bhagavata Purana, with its rolling melody of verses.

His life, as described in the Madhva Vijaya, is the narrative of a born leader of men. Madhva recognized the soul of the human being to be intrinsically divine; but man, in the ignorance of his true nature, has lost his soul to his body and its cravings and needs to be awakened by God himself or His devotees.

Madhva was only eight years old when he received spiritual initiation and at the age of twelve he accepted the sanyasa order and became a student under Achyutapreksa, who came in the order of Ekanti-Vaisnavas of the Ekadandi order. He was given the name Purnaprajna. After taking sanyas, he travelled the length and breadth of India.

During his study of the sastras he became convinced about the inherent contradictions in the Advaita philosophy and developed a keen desire to revive the theistic science of Vedas with his own thorough reinterpretation of the texts.

After only a short time in his studies, frequent disagreements over theosophic conclusions arose between himself and his teacher. Acyutaprajna could see that Purnaprajna was destined to make history and made him head of the Math. On that memorable occasion Purnaprajna was given another name “Anandatirtha”. Much later he adopted the name Madhva.

Madhvacharya spent some time teaching and engaging outstanding scholars belonging to Buddhist, Jain and Advaita sampradayas, in logical and philosophical discussions and vanquishing them in debates. He set out to propagate his teachings and travelled extensively throughout South India. He visited Kanyakumari, Rameshwaram and Srirangam holding discourses on the Brahmasutras and openly criticizing Sankaracharya’s Bhasyas on the Sutras.

Giving his own interpretations he soundly defeated all he encountered and naturally roused a good deal of opposition from the leaders of the orthodox schools of thought. At Kanyakumari he met with stiff opposition from an Advaitic monk of great learning who challenged him to write a fresh commentary on the Brahma sutras before he ventured to criticize the time honoured one of Sankaracharya. Madhva assured him that he would do so, in good time. At Srirangam he came in contact with the followers of the Ramanuja sect and after exchanging views with them, noted his own points of agreement and difference with them. This South Indian tour gave him great resolve to set out on his first tour of the north.

Madhvacharya was anxious to go to Badarikasrama and receive personal inspiration from a visit to the ashram of Vyasadeva, the compiler of the Vedas and author of Mahabharata and Srimad Bhagavatam.

After staying 48 days at Badarinath, fasting, praying, meditating and dedicating his Gita-Bhasya to the Lord, Madhvacharya was inspired to go to the hermitage of Vyasa muni. He went there all alone and after gaining the personal darshan of Vyasadeva himself and learning from him, returned after some months, glowing with divine energy and wrote his Bhasya on the Brahma-Sutras.

On his way back from Badarikasrama, Madhvacharya challenged many eminent scholars of the day. Prominent among these were two outstanding scholars, Swami Sastrin and Sobhana Bhatta, known as masters of the six systems of philosophy. Madhvacharya soundly defeated these two who subsequently became his disciples known as Narahari Tirtha and Padmanabha Tirtha respectively. Journeying through Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Andhra desh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, he returned to Udupi.

Madhvacharya’s fame and prestige had grown considerably and his commentaries on the Gita and Brahma sutras had made their mark and were widely recognized and respected. In his Matha in Udupi he introduced strict codes of conduct for his followers, introduced the system of Pushpa yagnas (offerings made from flowers), in place of actual animal sacrifices in yajnas and imposed the rigorous observance of fasts on Ekadasi.

Srila Madhvacharya was also blessed with the acquisition of the beautiful deity of Udupi Krishna. The amazing story of how the Bal-Krishna Deity crossed the ocean from faraway Dwarka in Northwest India to Udupi in the south is told in Madhva-vijaya, the biography of Srila Madhvacharya.

As a pure Vaishnava, Madhva wanted to have a temple of Lord Krishna in Udupi; the devotees could then worship and serve the Lord and be blessed. It so happened that in Dwarka, Sri Krishna’s last place of divine pastimes on earth 5000 years ago, a Deity lay concealed within a large clump of gopi-candana clay (the yellowish clay Vaishnavas use daily in marking their freshly bathed bodies as temples of Lord Vishnu).

No one knew the Deity was buried in there, but because the lump of clay was exceedingly heavy, some sailors loaded it onto their merchant ship as ballast. On the ship’s southward journey, just off the coast of Udupi, a powerful storm blew the ship aground on a sandbank.

On that very day, Srila Madhvacharya absorbed in composing the Dvadasha-stotra, his famous twelve-verses hymn praising Lord Krishna, had gone to the beach to bathe or, as some say, to receive the Lord. Upon seeing the ship stranded in the sandbank and hearing the cries of the sailors in distress, Srila Madhvacharya waved his cloth in their direction. This calmed the stormy winds and the sea and the ship floated free. Madhva then guided the vessel to safety. Eager to show his gratitude, the ship’s captain offered the sage whatever he wanted from the ship’s cargo. Madhva chose the heavy lump of gopi-candana clay.

The disciples of Madhvacharya had just started back to Udupi with the large lump of clay when, but a short distance from the beach, the lump broke in two, revealing the charming Deity of Lord Bal-Krishna. But now the combined effort of thirty of Madhva’s disciples could not budge the Deity.
Only when Madhvacharya himself embraced and lifted the Deity as if He were a child did the Deity consent to be moved. In great transcendental bliss Madhva carried the Lord the four miles back to Udupi. On the way he spontaneously completed the remaining seven stanzas of Dvadasha-stotra, reciting the verses out loud.

Back in Udupi, Madhva bathed the Lord in the lake known as Madhva-sarovara and enshrined Him in the Sri Krishna Matha. Srila Madhvacharya instituted rigorous standards for worshipping Sri Krishna and whenever he was in Udupi he would personally perform the thirteen daily worship ceremonies for the Lord.

How the Deity of Bal-Krishna had come to be buried in Dwarka is told in Prameya-navamalika-tika, a work from the 17th century by Raghuvarya Tirtha, an acharya in succession from Srila Madhvacharya.

Once, during the time of Lord Krishna’s manifest pastimes on earth, mother Devaki lamented to her son over her misfortune at never having witnessed the Lord’s childhood pastimes in Vrindavana. She entreated Krishna to make her happy and fortunate, like mother Yashoda, by showing some of His childhood pastimes.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, just to give pleasure to His pure devotee, at once assumed the form of a small child and climbed all over Devaki’s lap. Later, when Devaki went to churn butter, Krishna, acting like an ordinary mischievous child, broke the churn, ate the lumps of butter and even smeared butter all over his transcendental body.

He then snatched the churning rod and rope from Devaki’s hands. After sporting like this for some time, the entire vision disappeared and the Lord again was in His usual form of eternal youth. Mother Devaki was thrilled beyond measure to see this childhood pastime of the Lord.

Rukmini-devi, Lord Krishna’s principal consort, who also witnessed the pastimes was thrilled at the Lord’s precocious behavior and childhood pranks. To preserve the memory, she had a Deity made of child Krishna holding a churning rod and rope. Queen Rukmini began to worship this Deity regularly. Later, after the Lord returned to His eternal realm with His retinue, Arjuna deposited the Deity in a place called Rukminivana in Dwarka. In the course of millenia the Deity became completely covered with clay and it remained in that condition near Dwarka until merchant sailors brought it to Madhvacharya at Udupi.

Before his departure from this world, Srila Madhvacharya appointed eight of his sanyasi disciples to take charge of the worship at Sri Krishna Matha and to continue propagating Krishna consciousness in the region.

Today the responsibility for the worship is rotated in two-year periods called paryaaya among eight sanyasis in disciplic succession from the original eight. During the fourteen-year interim period between turns at paryaaya, each sanyasi travels and preaches and raises funds for use when his turn for worship comes. During his paryaaya, he personally performs the thirteen daily ritual services to the Deity.

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu belonged to the dwaita-adwaita Brahma-Madhva sampradaya which originates from Brahma-Narada-Vedavyasa-Madhvacharya. After Mahaprabhu who was from Gaud (Bengal), the Bengal lineage came to be known as the Brahma-Madhva Gaudiya sampradaya

Jagatguru Srila Madhvacharya ki Jai !!

Nitai Gaur Hari Bol !!

 

Jai Gurudev!

Jai Jai Shri Radhey !