Ramanuja

Ramanuja (traditionally c. 1017–1137 CE) was a South Indian Brahmin theologian and the single most influential thinker of devotional (bhakti) Hinduism. Born at Shriperumbudur near present-day Chennai, he became, by tradition, the leading teacher of the Sri Vaishnava community centred on the temple town of Srirangam.

The dates 1017–1137 are the long-standing traditional account, which credits him with a lifespan of 120 years; some modern scholars instead place his life somewhat later (often given as c. 1077–1157). The Atlas records the traditional dates while noting that they are hagiographical and contested.

Against the strict nondualism (Advaita) of Shankara — for whom the world and the individual self are ultimately unreal appearances over a featureless absolute — Ramanuja articulated Vishishtadvaita, “qualified nondualism.” On this view reality is one, but it is a differentiated whole: the individual souls and the material world are real and form the “body” of the supreme Brahman, identified with the personal God Vishnu/Narayana.

Because the soul is genuinely distinct yet wholly dependent on God, the fitting path is loving surrender (prapatti) and devotion answered by divine grace, not the dissolution of the self into an impersonal absolute.

He set out this system in three major commentaries — the Sri Bhashya on the Brahma Sutras, the Vedartha Sangraha, and the Gita Bhashya — giving devotional religion a rigorous philosophical foundation and reorganising temple worship to spread it.