Ramanujacharya – Biography - ebooks - ISKCON desire tree

egan to learn the wonderfully instructive stories containedin this book. As I recounted them to my students, 'Historyof Vaisnavism' quickly came to be our most popular class.From this point, with the encouragement of otherdevotees working in gurukula, it seemed natural to beginwriting down the subject matter as I was teaching it. Thereis, of course, a great need at the present time to providesuitable reading material for the hungry young minds eagerto employ the reading skills we have taught them in theirearly years in gurukula. It is therefore my hope andexpectation that this book will be the first of many as webuild up a full library of books for our older students, inaddition to the publications for younger children that havebeen provided by Bala Books.Although this book was originally written for ourolder gurukula students-and for this reason the emphasis ison pastimes rather than philosophy - I am confident that alldevotees will like to read about the life of this greatacarya and gain inspiration from the wonderful example heset. In addition, I think that parents of younger children,for whom the style of writing may be too advanced, will findthat their sons and daughters will relish these stories ifthey are read aloud to them.The main source for the life of Ramanuja is a bookcalled the Prapannamrta, written in Sanskrit by Anantacarya,a descendant of Andhrapurna. There is some controversy aboutthe date of this work. Some scholars have tried to show thatit was written as late as the seventeenth century, but mostauthorities agree the author was a junior contemporary ofRamanuja's and therefore able to compile the material fromfirst-hand sources. There are 126 chapters in thePrapannamrta, the first 68 of which describe the life ofYamunacarya. The remaining 58 chapters deal with the livesof Yamunacarya, Nathamuni, and other south Indian Vaisnavas.It is this book to which Srila Prabhupada refers when hementions the life of Ramanuja in his purports to theCaitanya Caritamrta.Another important work on the life of Ramanuja is theDivya-suri-charitai, a book written in Tamil by Garudavaha,who was also probably a contemporary of Ramanuja, althoughagain this fact is disputed by some authorities. Inaddition, there is the Guru-parampara-prabhavam by PerumalJiyar, written in the early part of the fourteenth centuryand Lokam Jiyar's Ramananujacarya-divya-charitai.The main pastimes are the same in all these works,but it is frequently found that they vary quite considerablyin the detail. For this reason I have occasionally had touse my own discretion in choosing between the differentversions. The names of the various characters described alsovary, depending mainly on whether they are given in Tamil orthe Sanskrit equivalent. By and large I have used theSanskrit form of the names where I could find them, as I4