[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [General history and culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general) › [A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955) › c19.s1.7 # A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s1.7 A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s1.7 - **Language:** English ### [c19.s1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1.7) Among the Purāṇas, the \*Bhāgavata\* was composed somewhere in South India about the beginning of the tenth century. It summed up the tenets and outlook of the neo-bhakti cult which had been developing from the fourth or fifth century in the course of the conflict between Hinduism and the non-Vedic creeds of Jainism and Buddhism. The \*Bhāgavata\* combines a simple surging emotional \*bhakti\* to Krishna with the Advaita philosophy of Śankara in a manner that has been considered possible only in the Tamil country in that period. The \*Vishṇu Purāṇa\*, perhaps the shortest and the best work of its class, was commented on by Vishnu Chitta in the twelfth century from the standpoint of Viśishtādvaita. We must also notice the more famous commentaries on the \*Rāmāyaṇa\* and \*Mahābhārata\* for the place they hold in literary criticism as well as in religious thought. Ātreya Varadarāja, otherwise known as Uḍāli, composed his \*Vivekatilaka\* on the \*Rāmāyaṇa\* in the twelfth century; he came later than Rāmānuja and is cited in the \*Iḍu\*, the great thirteenth-century commentary on \*Tiruvāymoḻi\*. The much better-known \*Bhūṣaṇa\*, also the work of a Vaishnava author, was produced by Govindarāja, a native of Kāñchipuram and contemporary of Krishnadeva Rāya and Rāma Rāya of Vijayanagar. He is said to have got his inspiration to write the work during one of his visits to the famous shrine at Tirupati. Mādhava Yogi was the author of \*Kaṭaka\*, an important commentary on the \*Rāmāyaṇa\*; the author put forward many interesting points of textual criticism and held Rāma to be an avatar of Brahmā as the Lord of Gāyatrī. Again, the \*Vālmīki-hṛdaya\* of Ahobala was based on the comments on select verses from the \*Rāmāyaṇa\* scattered throughout the \*Iḍu\*. Īśvara Dikshita of the Kaundinya \*gōtra\* wrote two commentaries on the epic, a \*laghu\* and a \*bṛhad vivaraṇa\* in 1517; the work was done at Hemakūṭa in Vijayanagar under the patronage of Krishnadeva Rāya. All together about a score of commentaries on the \*Rāmāyaṇa\* were produced in South India. On the \*Mahābhārata\*, the \*Lakṣhābharaṇa\* of Vādirāja, written some time during the sixteenth century, is the best known of the extant commentaries from South India; the author has sought in his own way to determine the authentic text of the 100,000 verses of the great epic. About the same time or a little earlier came the \*Vyākhyāratnāvali\* of Ānandapūrṇa Vidyāsāgara who wrote from Gokarna on the west coast and was a contemporary of the Kadamba Kāmadeva, father-in-law of Harihara II of Vijayanagar. A third commentary by Sarvajña Nārāyaṇa, only fragments of which survive, is perhaps the oldest work of its class so far known from the South. - [Previous: c19.s1.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1.6) - [Next: c19.s1.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1.8) - [Up: c19.s1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1) ## Linked texts (5) - [Bhāgavatapurāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.purana.bhagavata) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Mahābhārata](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.mahabharata.vyasa) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Viṣṇupurāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.purana.visnu) — Vyāsa, Sanskrit - [Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.lit.ramayana.valmiki) — Vālmīki, Sanskrit - [Tiruvāymoḻi](https://indike.org/pramana/in.sampradaya.vaisnava.alvar.tiruvaymoli) — Nammāḻvār, Tamil --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.general.sastri-1955.c19.s1.7) · Pramāṇa