Later students often found Madhvacharya's style truly difficult. He wrote in a dense, compressed way, and he gave little of the step-by-step explanation that makes a philosophical text easy to follow. Padmanabha Tirtha was the first serious disciple to take up the work of explaining it. By B. N. K. Sharma's count, he left behind nearly fifteen works that did exactly that.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Total works ascribed | Nearly 15 |
| On the Brahma-sutra-bhashya | Sattarkadipavali (covering the opening sections only) |
| On the Anuvyakhyana | Sannyayaratnavali |
| On the Vishnu-tattva-vinirnaya | Nyayaratnavali |
| On the Gita-bhashya | Gitabhashya-Bhavadipika |
| On the ten Prakaranas | Commentaries on all ten, though manuscripts of three are lost |
| Later status | Superseded within a generation by Jayatirtha's own commentaries |
The First to Explain Nearly Everything #
Trivikrama Panditacharya was the other well-known early commentator on Madhva's works. What sets Padmanabha Tirtha apart from him is simply that he covered far more. Trivikrama wrote a commentary only on the Brahma-sutra-bhashya. Padmanabha Tirtha commented on Madhva's Dasha-prakaranas (the ten shorter philosophical tracts), the Brahma-sutra-bhashya, the Anuvyakhyana and the Gita-bhashya. By Sharma's account, he is the earliest known commentator on all of them. In a broad sense, Sharma calls him the Tikakara, "the commentator," of the whole system. He was the person who first made most of Madhva's major works easy for later students to approach. Sharma describes his style as clear and to the point, without long side discussions. He rarely turned to long arguments against opposing views, which later commentators, Jayatirtha above all, would become known for.
A Tribute From His Greatest Successor #
Jayatirtha wrote a generation after Padmanabha Tirtha. In time he produced commentaries so thorough and so widely studied that they replaced nearly all the earlier ones. That included Padmanabha Tirtha's own commentaries, along with those of Trivikrama and Narahari Tirtha. Yet Jayatirtha did not simply set aside the work of the teacher before him. In his own Nyaya-sudha, he honours Padmanabha Tirtha formally and by name. He praises him as the pioneer whose commentaries protected Madhva's works for later generations, so that they were not lost because of "serious difficulties." He also gives him the title of honour Tikakara for this service. This is rare in the history of any school of thought. The writer whose work later outshone nearly everyone else's still stopped to thank, formally, the teacher whose work he had built on.
Read Today Mostly by Specialists #
Padmanabha Tirtha's own commentaries were very important in the history of the school, but today they are read mainly by Dvaita specialists. Sharma says plainly that the earlier commentaries of Trivikrama, Narahari Tirtha and Padmanabha Tirtha alike "have been completely superseded" by Jayatirtha's own writing, and "are no longer studied" except for their historical interest. Several of Padmanabha Tirtha's fifteen works survive only in manuscript form and have never been published. His importance comes less from being read now and more from having made possible everything written after him.
