VEDANTADESIKA

also called Venkatanatha born 1268, Tuppule, near Kanchipuram, Vijayanagar, India died 1370, Srirangam leading theologian of the Visistadvaita (Qualified Nondualism) school of philosophy and founder of the Vadakalai, a subsect of the Srivaisnavas, a religious movement of South India. Vedantadesika was born into a distinguished Srivaisnava family that followed the teachings of Ramanuja, an 11th12th-century saint. A precocious child, Vedantadesika was said to have been taken at the age of five to meet the sect's leader, Vatsya Varadacarya, who blessed him, saying he would in time be a great teacher and repudiate all false philosophers. Vedantadesika married and had a family but lived on alms in order to devote himself fully to his philosophic and literary efforts. He was a prolific writer in both Sanskrit and Tamil; his more than 100 works include commentaries on Vaisnava scriptures; Nyaya-parisuddhi, a comprehensive work on Visistadvaita logic; Yadavabhyudaya, a poetic work on the life of Krishna; Sankalpa-suryodaya, an allegorical drama; and devotional hymns. According to Vedantadesika's interpretation of prapatti (surrender to the grace of God), some effort is required on the part of the worshiper to secure God's grace, just as the baby monkey must hold to its mother (the markata-nyaya, or the analogy of the monkey). This viewtogether with ritual and linguistic differencesbecame the basis for the split between the two subsects, the Vadakalai and the Tengalai, who held that God's grace is unconditioned and that the human soul is as unassertive as a kitten carried by its mother.