Ramanuja, also called Ramanujacharya, or Ilaiya Perumal (Tamil: Ageless Perumal [God]) (born c. 1017, Shriperumbudur, India—died 1137, Shrirangam), South Indian Brahman theologian and philosopher, the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism. After a long pilgrimage, Ramanuja settled in Shrirangam, where he organized temple worship and founded centres to disseminate his doctrine of devotion to the god Vishnu and his consort Shri (Lakshmi). He provided an intellectual basis for the practice of bhakti (devotional worship) in three major commentaries: the Vedartha-samgraha (on the Vedas, the earliest scriptures of Hinduism), the Shri-bhashya (on the Brahma-sutras), and the Bhagavadgita-bhashya (on the Bhagavadgita).
Life
Information on the life of Ramanuja consists only of the accounts given in the legendary biographies about him, in which a pious imagination has embroidered historical details. According to tradition, he was born in southern India, in what is now Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras) state. He showed early signs of theological acumen and was sent to Kanchi (Kanchipuram) for schooling, under the teacher Yadavaprakasha, who was a follower of the monistic (Advaita) system of the Vedanta of Shankara, the famous 8th-century philosopher. Ramanuja’s profoundly religious nature was soon at odds with a doctrine that offered no room for a personal god. After falling out with his teacher he had a vision of the god Vishnu and his consort Shri and instituted a daily worship ritual at the place where he beheld them.
He became a temple priest at the Varadaraja temple at Kanchi, where he began to expound the doctrine that the goal of those who aspire to final release (moksha) from transmigration is not the impersonal brahman but rather brahman as identified with the personal god Vishnu. In Kanchi, as well as Shrirangam, where he was to become associated with the Ranganatha temple, he developed the teaching that the worship of a personal god and the soul’s union with him is an essential part of the doctrines of the Upanishads (speculative commentaries on the Vedas) on which the system of Vedanta is built; therefore, the teachings of the Vaishnavas and Bhagavatas (worshippers and ardent devotees of Vishnu) are not heterodox. In this he continued the teachings of Yamuna (Yamunacharya; 10th century), his predecessor at Shrirangam, to whom he was related on his mother’s side. He set forth this doctrine in his three major commentaries.
Like many Hindu thinkers, he made an extended pilgrimage, circumambulating India from Rameswaram (part of Adam’s Bridge), along the west coast to Badrinath, the source of the holy river Ganges, and returning along the east coast. Tradition has it that later he suffered from the zeal of King Kulottunga of the Chola dynasty, who adhered to the god Shiva, and withdrew to Mysore, in the west. There he converted numbers of Jains, as well as King Bittideva of the Hoyshala dynasty; this led to the founding in 1099 of the town Milukote (Melcote, present Karnataka state) and the dedication of a temple to Shelva Pillai (Sanskrit, Sampatkumara, the name of a form of Vishnu). He returned after 20 years to Shrirangam, where he organized the temple worship, and, reputedly, he founded 74 centres to disseminate his doctrine. After a life of 120 years, according to the tradition, he passed away in 1137.