NIMBARKA

also called Nimbaditya, or Niyamananda flourished 13th century, ?, South India Telugu-speaking Brahman, yogi, minor philosopher, and prominent astronomer who founded the devotional sect called Nimbarkas, Nimandi, or Nimavats, who worshiped the deity Krishna (Krsna) and his consort, Radha. Nimbarka has been identified with Bhaskara, a 9th- or 10th-century philosopher and celebrated commentator on the Brahma-sutra (Ve- danta-sutra). Most historians of Hindu mysticism, however, hold that Nimbarka probably lived in the 12th or 13th century because of the similarities between his philosophical and devotional attitudes and those of Ramanuja (traditionally dated 10171137). Both adhered to dvaitadvaita (Sanskrit: dualistic non-dualism), the belief that the creator-god and the souls he created were distinct but shared in the same substance, and both stressed devotion to Krishna as a means of liberation from the cycle of rebirth. The Nimanda sect flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries in eastern India. Its philosophy held that men were trapped in physical bodies constricted by prakrti (matter) and that only by surrender to Radha-Krishna (not through their own efforts) could they attain the grace necessary for liberation from rebirth; then, at death, the physical body would drop away. Thus Nimbarka stressed bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion and faith. Many books were written about this once-popular cult, but most sources were destroyed by Muslims during the reign of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (16591707), and thus little information has survived about Nimbarka and his followers.