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Re: Our Sampradhayam

From the Bhakti List Archives

Venkatesh Elayavalli/DCOM • July 7, 1998 


Folowing is based on my limited understanding of our Sampradhayam:

The Visistadvaita (or the Sri Sampradhaya) was practiced under a
different name: BhAgavata (or EkAyana or PAncarAtra) religion.

There have been lot of references to this in various Puranas and
IthihAs. Sri. A Govindacarya in his groundbreaking analysis on
PAncarAtra, mentions that PAdma Tatra and Vishnu Purana
gives a whole lot of detail on BhAgavata Religion. In his paper
(PAncarAtra or BhAgavata-Sastra, published in 1909),
Sri. A Govindacarya traces the relationship between the
BhAgavata religion and Sri Sampradhayam. He refers
to Isvara Samhita and other works and establishes the
legitimacy of the GuruParampara, the traditional respect
and devotion for Sriman Narayana, followed by Sri,  Senai
Mudhaliyar, Nammazvar etc.


There are not that many publications on this topic. Sri Krishnamachari
has a series of articles published in SaraNAgati Journal. You can go
to the archives form http://www.SriVaishnava.org/sgati. there is also
a book by Oto Schrader (sp?) published by Adyar Library that talkes
about PAncarAtra and related Samhitas. Another source may be:

Pancaratra Samhitas and Early Vaisnava Theology by
            Mitsunori Matsubara  Published by Motilal Banarsidas.

if you are interested, you can download the paper by
Sri A. Govindacary at a latter date form my WEB site. I am still
in the process of typing it. It seems that this was the first
publication on PAncarAtra to appear in a Western Journal.

regards,



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