Jayatirtha earned the title Tikacharya, "the Commentator," through a body of writing of twenty-one titles. These are eighteen commentaries on works by Madhvacharya and three independent works of his own. Almost nothing in Madhva's own Sarvamula collection was left without his commentary. He commented on nearly all the writing of Madhvacharya, his guru's own teacher, in a working life of only twenty-three years. Sharma's academic history sees this completeness as the one fact that did more than anything else to win Dvaita Vedanta a standing equal to the far older Advaita and Vishishtadvaita schools.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Magnum opus | Nyaya-sudha, commentary on Madhva's Anu-vyakhyana |
| Most-studied work | Tattva-prakashika, commentary on Madhva's Brahma-sutra-bhashya |
| Total works credited to him | Twenty-one: eighteen commentaries, three independent treatises |
| Independent treatises | Vadavali, Pramana-paddhati, Padyamala |
| Later commentaries drawn to the Tattva-prakashika | At least eleven, chief among them Vyasa Tirtha's Tatparya-chandrika |
| Honorific title | Tikacharya, "the Commentator" |
The Nyaya-sudha, His Magnum Opus #
Jayatirtha's most important work is the Nyaya-sudha. It is a vast commentary on Madhvacharya's Anu-vyakhyana, which is Madhva's own verse supplement to his Brahma-sutra-bhashya. Sharma's history records that it runs to roughly 24,000 granthas (verse-units). It was first titled Visamapada-vakyartha-vivrti, before later tradition settled on the shorter name it is known by today. This name is popularly shortened to the Sudha. It closely examines the views of the rival Vedanta teachers of its day, among them Shankaracharya, Bhaskara, Ramanujacharya and Yadavaprakasha. It also deals with the separate schools of Nyaya, Samkhya, Mimamsa and Buddhist philosophy. A traditional saying quoted by Sharma holds that the Sudha alone deserves to be called a true commentary. After a lifetime of studying this literature, Sharma himself calls it a work with "not one other" like it "in the whole range of Sanskrit philosophical literature."
The Tattva-prakashika and the Rest of the Sutra-prasthana #
The Tattva-prakashika is his second most important work, and today it is by far the most widely studied commentary on Madhva's Brahma-sutra-bhashya. It runs to about 8,000 granthas. It so thoroughly replaced earlier commentaries that at least eleven later Dvaita scholars wrote their own commentaries on it in turn. Chief among them is Sri Vyasa Tirtha's own Tatparya-chandrika, which is still studied today.
Beyond these two central works, Jayatirtha wrote commentaries on nearly every other text in Madhva's Sutra-prasthana and beyond: on the Tattva-samkhyana, Tattva-viveka, Tattvoddyota, Vishnu-tattva-nirnaya, Mayavada-khandana, Prapancha-mithyatvanumana-khandana, Upadhi-khandana, Pramana-lakshana and Karma-nirnaya (all short works of Madhva's own that argue against opposing views), the Nyaya-vivarana, the Shatprashna Upanishad-bhashya and Isha Upanishad-bhashya, the Rg-bhashya, and two separate commentaries on Madhva's writing on the Bhagavad-gita: the Gita-bhashya Prameya-dipika and the Gita-tatparya Nyayadipika. Together with the Nyaya-sudha and Tattva-prakashika, this makes eighteen commentaries in all.
Three Works Of His Own #
Jayatirtha also left three independent works, not commentaries on Madhva at all. The Vadavali is an early, sharply argued work against the Advaita teaching that the visible world is ultimately unreal, or mithya. The Pramana-paddhati is a compact textbook on how true knowledge is gained in Dvaita philosophy. It sets out the pramanas (means of valid knowledge) that the school recognizes, and its theory of how error and mistaken understanding arise. The Padyamala is a smaller work on points of worship drawn from Madhva's own Tantra-sara-sangraha. On the strength of the commentaries and these three original works, later tradition ranks Jayatirtha, together with Madhvacharya and Vyasa Tirtha, as one of the Munitraya, "the three sages" of Dvaita Vedanta. Sharma's own history is formally dedicated to these same three names.
