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Cover Story |
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Sri Vallabhacharya - Swami Tapasyananda |
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Early Life |
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All the great Vaishnava Acharyas — Ramanuja (1017-1137), Nimbarka (13th century) and Madhva (1238-1317) — had preceded Vallabhacharya and the only other one, Chaitanya (1485-1533), was his contemporary. Vallabha (1479-1532), son of Lakshmana Bhatta and Yellamma Garu, was of Telugu extraction. Lakshmana Bhatta belonged to a family of learned and devoted Vaishnavas residing at Kakarvad, a town on the southern bank of the river Krishna. Yellamma Garu’s mother belonged to an influential family, as her father Sharma was a priest in the service of the royal house of Vijayanagara. Lakshmana Bhatta migrated along with his family to Banaras, a city noted for its holiness and its learned scholars. But he was forced to flee the city in about 1479 because of the threat of a Muslim invasion of that place. His idea was perhaps to go back to his village. In the course of his flight when he was passing through a forest region near Camparanya, a locality near modern Raipur, the child who came to be known as Vallabha was born. It is said he was still-born and was miraculously saved. After a short stay at Camparanya, Lakshmana Bhatta returned to Banaras, as the threatened Muslim invasion did not take place. |
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Vallabha, as he grew up, showed himself to be an extraordinary prodigy. His education began at the age of seven. Under a teacher Vishnucitta by name, he mastered in four years the Vedas, their auxiliaries, the six systems of philosophy and scriptural texts like the Gita, the Bhagavata and the Pancaratra. When he was eleven his father passed away, and this led to the break up of the home at Banaras. From this time, even from that tender age, Vallabha undertook a pilgrimage of the whole of India three times lasting for a period of about twenty years, and all this time he remained a Brahmacharin — a celebrate aspirant. In some of these holy wanderings he was accompanied by his mother and the other family members. |
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© `Sri Vallabhacharya’s His Life Religion and Philosophy’ by Swami Tapasyananda, published by Sri Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Chennai 600 004. (Website: sriramakrishnamath.org.) |
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1 It is a strange that the books on Vallabha describe Madhavendra Puri as a Sannyasin of the Madhva Sect. Puris are one of the ten Orders of monks claiming spiritual descent from Sri Sankaracharya. The description of Madhavendra as a follower of Madhva may be due to the prejudice that writers on Vallabha entertained towards Sankara. Vallabha is metaphysically as different from Madhva as from Sri Sankara. For further information on this ascetic, see Sri Chaitanya’s life. |
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