Padmanabha Tirtha

Padmanabha Tirtha comes right after Madhvacharya in the Gaudiya Vaishnava guru-parampara. He also comes right after Madhva in the documented history of the Dvaita Vedanta school itself, and that second fact makes him unusual among the names in this parampara list. Some other links in this chain can be traced only through Gaudiya sources. But Padmanabha Tirtha's place as Madhva's own disciple and first successor is confirmed by the Dvaita tradition's own texts too. It is also confirmed by more than half a century of independent study of those texts by scholars, most of all B. N. K. Sharma's standard history of the school. He was already a serious scholar before he ever met Madhva. He soon became one of Madhva's most trusted early disciples. Tradition remembers him as the first person to hold the seat Madhva left behind when he departed from this world.

A Scholar Named Shobhana Bhatta #

Before he took sannyasa, Padmanabha Tirtha was called Shobhana Bhatta. Every source agrees that he was already an important figure. Madhvacharya's own earliest biography, the Sanskrit poem Madhva-vijaya, describes him as a master of many branches of learning and a skilled logician. There is real disagreement about where exactly he came from. Several early writers assumed he was a Telugu brahmana from the Andhra country. They read this from a line in the Madhva-vijaya that places him "in the region of the Godavari." B. N. K. Sharma disagreed. He pointed to other early Dvaita-tradition texts that call Shobhana Bhatta a teacher "of the good folk of Karnataka." He also pointed out that separate records show Kannada-speaking settlements along the upper Godavari well into the thirteenth century. For these reasons, Sharma held that Shobhana Bhatta more likely belonged to Uttara-Karnataka, the northern edge of the Kannada-speaking region, and not to Andhra itself. The available sources cannot settle either claim beyond doubt. Since the sources themselves do not agree, both views are given here.

Beaten in Debate, Won Over to Dvaita #

Shobhana Bhatta and Madhvacharya met somewhere on the banks of the Godavari, most likely near Puntamba or Paithan. This happened while Madhvacharya was returning to Udupi from his first journey to North India, probably around 1265 CE. Both sides of the later split between the Gaudiya and Dvaita traditions remember what happened next in very similar terms. There was a formal philosophical contest, and Shobhana Bhatta lost it. Sharma reads the Madhva-vijaya as saying he tried "conclusions with Madhva" and was "worsted by him in disputation." He then asked to join the new teaching and was initiated as Padmanabha Tirtha. His was not the only conversion on that journey. Around the same time, Madhva also met a second scholar, Svami Sastri. Svami Sastri became a disciple under the name Narahari Tirtha, and later succeeded Padmanabha Tirtha in turn. His own page is at Narahari Tirtha.

First to Sit on the Pitha #

The Madhva-vijaya singles Padmanabha Tirtha out for special praise. Dvaita tradition remembers him as probably the senior-most of Madhva's disciples from outside the Tulu-speaking heartland around Udupi. That status made him the natural choice to lead the community after Madhva's own departure. The Uttaradi Matha counts him today as its first pontiff. Later tradition speaks of four direct disciples who carried Madhva's teaching beyond Udupi: Padmanabha Tirtha, Narahari Tirtha, Madhava Tirtha and Akshobhya Tirtha. Sharma's academic history places Padmanabha Tirtha first among them. But we should seriously ask whether history really followed this neat order of four, instead of assuming that it is settled. This question is examined below.

Fifteen Works, Mostly Eclipsed #

Padmanabha Tirtha's importance to Dvaita literature is not in doubt. Sharma counts nearly fifteen works to his name. Most of them are commentaries that explain Madhva's own Sanskrit, which is famous for being very brief and hard to follow. They include the Sattarkadipavali on the Brahma-sutra-bhashya, the Sannyayaratnavali on the Anuvyakhyana, the Nyayaratnavali on the Vishnu-tattva-vinirnaya, the Gitabhashya-Bhavadipika on the Gita-bhashya, and commentaries on all ten of Madhva's shorter philosophical works, the Dasha-prakaranas. By Sharma's account, he was the earliest known commentator on several of these texts. Jayatirtha, the great commentator who came a generation later, in time took the place of nearly everyone's earlier work. Even so, Jayatirtha singled Padmanabha Tirtha out for a formal tribute. He called him the pioneer without whose guidance Madhva's own works "would have presented serious difficulties to posterity," and gave him the title Tikakara, "the commentator." More on his specific works, and on Jayatirtha's tribute, is on Commentaries That Shaped Early Dvaita.

One Line, Read Two Ways #

Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita shows that the Gaudiya guru-parampara list is not confirmed by the separate succession records kept by the Madhva sampradaya itself. This point is discussed fully on Life in the Madhva Sampradaya. Padmanabha Tirtha's case falls in between. His place as Madhva's disciple and first successor really is recorded in the Dvaita tradition's own sources. Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya 9.245, tells largely the same story from the Gaudiya side. The Gaudiya parampara states the chain plainly, as in the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika:

Madhvacharya took initiation in the Krishna mantra from Vyasa. Madhva's disciple was Padmanabhacharya, an illustrious person, whose disciple was Narahari, who was followed by Madhava, the twice-born. Madhava's disciple was Akshobhya, who was followed by Jayatirtha.

But this is not quite how Dvaita tradition itself describes what came after Madhva. Independent research into the Madhva sampradaya's own records treats Padmanabha, Narahari, Madhava and Akshobhya Tirtha as four separate, direct disciples of Madhvacharya. Tradition holds that they were initiated close together in time. They were not initiated one after another, each by the one before, in a single chain running to Jayatirtha and, eventually, to Jnanasindhu. The fuller picture, including a real dispute over dates, is on One Guru, or Four Disciples?.

Entombed at Nava Brindavana #

Padmanabha Tirtha is remembered as having headed the community for about seven years before his own passing in 1324 CE. He was laid to rest at Nava Brindavana, an island in the Tungabhadra river near Anegundi, close to Hampi in modern Karnataka. Over the following three centuries, this same site received the tombs of eight more Dvaita-tradition pontiffs, among them the celebrated Vyasa Tirtha. Padmanabha Tirtha's own tomb there is the oldest of the nine. The site remains an active place of pilgrimage today for the Uttaradi Matha, the Vyasaraja Matha and the Raghavendra Matha. All three of these institutions trace their own founding back, in the end, through him to Madhvacharya.