DhIkshidhar at kudanthai

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Dr. S.R.Marur <smarur at EASI.SOFT.NET> wrote:

> Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <ramakris at EROLS.COM> wrote:
>
> >Unfortunately, the author does not seem to be aware of the statue
of
> >appayya in the marundisvarar temple in Thiruvanmiyur. He actually
says
> >that appayya probably did not travel very much beyond his native
> >village (adayapalam) which does not seem to be near Madras.
>
> The biography of HH SrI VijayIndhra ThIrtha, parama guru of HH SrI
> RaghavEndra Swamy, describes, in great detail, the debates Sri
> Appaya dhIkshidhar had with HH at KumbakOnam. HH is said to have
> won over DhIkshidhar in all of them. (HH is known as Ajaya
> VijayIndhrar). Impressed with His personality, DhIkshidhar chose to
> stay at KumbakOnam for some time, resulting in deep friendship
> between the two.

Sorry for sounding rude, but frankly, this seems like a cooked up
story to me. Appayya displays deep animosity towards the dvaita
doctrines at various places and has even written a text called
madhvatantramukhamardanam.  All these hagiographic tales are not of
any use. Dr. B.N.K Sharma who has written a very comprehensive and
well researched account of dvaita and it's literature says "There is
no authentic biography of Vijayindra, such as we have for Vyasatirtha.
There are a few sketches of his life in the form of Sanskrit stotras
by later day devotees. But they are of negligible historical value"
(page 396 History of Dvaita Vedanta and its literature).

> When DhIkshidhar was in death bed, HH had visited him at his
> residence at KumbakOnam and is said to have advised him to
> continue the advaitic mode of worship & enquiry.

The above is enough to convince me that this whole thing is a fairy
tale. Vijayindra who was a disciple of Vyasatirtha himself advising
someone to continue advaitic mode of worship? I don't think so. But
whoever cooked up this story must have had a good sense of humour, no
doubt :-). And certainly a good competition for Grimm.

> The view that DhIkshidhar did not travel beyond Adayapalam
> may not be correct.

Perhaps, but that view certainly cannot be disputed using the above
fairy tale. And I don't see why we should give credence to some
arbitrary story floating around, when a dvaita writer like B.N.K.
Sharma himself does not.

Rama