had
been taught by some ancient schools of Aupanishadas, and was very like
the doctrine of some of the Buddhist idealists; but the vigour and
skill with which Samkara propagated his doctrines threatened ruin to
orthodox Vaishnava theologians, and roused them to counter-campaigns.
Among the Vaishnava Brahmans of the South who won laurels in this
field was Yamunacharya, who lived about 1050, and was the grandson of
Natha Muni, who collected the hymns of the Alvars in the
Nal-ayira-prabandham and founded the great school of Vaishnava
theology at Srirangam. In opposition to Samkara's monism, Yamunacharya
propounded the doctrine of his school, the so-called Visishtadvaita,
which was preached with still greater skill and success by his famous
successor Ramanuja, who died in 1137. Ramanuja's greatest works are
his commentaries on the Brahma-sutra and Bhagavad-gita. In them he
expounds with great ability the principles of his school, namely, that
God, sentient beings or souls, and insentient matter form three
essentially distinct classes of being; that God, who is the same as
Brahma, Vishnu, Narayana, or Krishna, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and
possessed of all good qualities; that matter forms the body of souls,
and souls form the body of God; that the soul attains salvation as a
result of devout and loving meditation upon God, worship of him, and
study of the scriptures; and that salvation consists in eternal union
of the soul with God, but not in identity with him, as Samkara taught.
The scriptures on which Ramanuja took his stand were mainly the
Upanishads, Brahma-sutra, and Bhagavad-gita; but he also acknowledged
as authoritative the Pancharatra Samhitas, in spite of their
divergences in details of doctrine, and it is from them that his
church has derived the worship of Sri or Lakshmi as consort of Vishnu,
which is a very marked feature of their community and has gained for
them the title of Sri-vaishnavas. But Ramanuja was much more than a
scholar and a writer of books; he was also a man of action, a
"practical mystic." Like Samkara, he organised a body of _sannyasis_
or ascetic votaries, into which, however, he admitted only Brahmans,
whereas Samkara opened some of the sections of his devotees to
non-Brahmans; but on the other hand he was far more liberal than
Samkara in the choice of his congregations, for he endeavoured to
bring men of the lowest castes, Sudras and even Pariahs, within the
influence of his church, thou