A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c20.26

c20.26

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed the rise of a schism among the followers of Rāmānuja due to a difference in their interpretation of *prapatti* (surrender). Some held that the devotee had to exert himself to win the grace of the Lord, while others thought that the Lord’s grace by itself conferred salvation on the soul that had entered the path of surrender. The position of the first school, Vaḍagalai (northern branch), is commonly summed up in the phrase *Markaṭakiśoranyāya*, the rule that the young monkey clings to its mother with an effort, and that of the second school, the Tengalai, is called *Mārjārakiśoranyāya*, the rule of the kitten which is carried by its mother in her mouth. There are other differences between the two schools, one of them being a decided preference for Tamil as against Sanskrit on the part of the Tengalais. The southern school looks upon Piḷḷai Lōkācārya (b. 1213) as its founder. He was the author of eighteen esoteric treatises (rahasyas), and had to leave Śrīrangam with the sacred image during the period of the Muslim inroads. He found an influential expositor in Maṇavāḷa Mahāmuni (b. circa 1370), the next great teacher and writer in the southern school. The leader of the northern school was Vedānta Dēśika (b. 1268). He once hid himself under a mass of dead bodies in Śrīrangam on the occasion of a Muslim incursion and escaped to Mysore until the storm blew over. As we have seen, he was poet, philosopher, and man of affairs.