In the years after his debate with Vidyaranya, tradition holds that Akshobhya Tirtha moved north from the Kolar region to Pandharpur, on the bank of the Bhima river. There, in his later years, he met the young man who would become his most celebrated disciple and eventual successor: Jayatirtha.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Meeting place | The bank of the Bhima river, near Pandharpur |
| Disciple | Jayatirtha |
| Later residence | Malkhed (ancient Manyakheta), Karnataka |
| Jayatirtha's succession | 1365 CE, on Akshobhya Tirtha's disappearance |
| Akshobhya Tirtha's samadhi | Malkhed, on the bank of the river Kagini |
| Later institutions descending from this line | Uttaradi Matha, Vyasaraja Matha, Raghavendra Swami Matha (the Matha-traya) |
A Meeting at Pandharpur #
Life and Renunciation Under Akshobhya Tirtha tells in full the story of Jayatirtha's own remarkable early life. It covers his birth name Dhondopant, his family background, and the well-known story of how he came to seek initiation. This page tells Akshobhya Tirtha's own side of the meeting. By tradition, he was the ascetic the young Dhondopant met on the bank of the Bhima river near Pandharpur. Akshobhya Tirtha accepted him as a disciple, ordained him into sannyasa, and gave him the name by which he is remembered: Jayatirtha.
Final Years at Malkhed #
After Jayatirtha's initiation, tradition holds that the two of them moved further north to Malkhed, ancient Manyakheta, on the bank of the river Kagini. Malkhed was once the capital of the Rashtrakuta dynasty. Akshobhya Tirtha spent his last years here. In the words of Dvaita tradition, he devoted himself to training his gifted disciple in the fine points of Madhva's own Dvaita philosophy. These were the skills of explaining texts that later let Jayatirtha uncover meanings in Madhvacharya's writing that earlier scholars had missed. Jayatirtha's own later writings are said to pay warm, direct tribute to the guru who had given him this training. When Akshobhya Tirtha's own life came to a close in 1365, Jayatirtha succeeded him as the sixth pontiff of the line running back through Madhvacharya. In just twenty-three years as pontiff, Jayatirtha went on to become the single most important commentator Dvaita Vedanta produced after its own founder.
A Samadhi Shared With His Disciple #
Akshobhya Tirtha's own samadhi (brindavana) stands at Malkhed on the bank of the Kagini. By tradition, Jayatirtha's own tomb is also nearby in the same town. Guru and disciple, in a sense, are still close to one another in the place both called home in their final years. Over the following two centuries, the line that continued after Jayatirtha split into what Dvaita tradition calls the Matha-traya, the three mathas: the Uttaradi Matha, the Vyasaraja Matha, and the Raghavendra Swami Matha at Mantralayam. All three trace their line of descent back through Jayatirtha to Akshobhya Tirtha himself. Whatever differences of teaching or organization have grown up between these three mathas over the centuries, all three still honor Akshobhya Tirtha. For all of them, he is the guru of Jayatirtha, the disciple from whom they all descend.
