In Loving Memory
Sri U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakshmithathacharya Swami
26 August 1936 – 15 May 2021
॥ śrīḥ ॥
This page is offered in loving memory of our beloved Ācārya, whose life, scholarship, knowledge, and generosity will forever inspire us.
May it be received in the spirit in which it was given.
Who he was
A life of scholarship, service, and spiritual responsibility
Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami was one of the distinguished Sanskrit scholars of his generation, but scholarship alone does not adequately describe his life.
He belonged to an unbroken Ācārya Puruṣa Paramparā descending through Ananthāchārya from Śrī Rāmānuja, and inherited from his forebears both an extraordinary intellectual tradition and the living responsibilities of an ācārya. He gave dīkṣā, cared for his śiṣyas, maintained the religious disciplines of his lineage, and made himself available to those who approached him sincerely for instruction.
His formal academic achievements were exceptional. He completed his M.A. in Sanskrit at Madras University first class, first rank, with two gold medals, and later qualified as Navya Nyāya Vidvān, again first class and first rank, receiving the President of India's Gold Medal. Yet his vision of scholarship extended far beyond the university.
In 1977 he left his university position to establish the Academy of Sanskrit Research at Melkōṭe. Under his direction it became an institution of national and international standing, preserving thousands of manuscripts and developing pioneering work in Sanskrit grammar, computational linguistics, speech synthesis, machine translation, lexicography, and other fields. His work also extended to agriculture, ecology, water conservation, temple restoration, and the cultural life of Melkōṭe itself. For him, the knowledge preserved in the śāstras was not a relic of the past. It was something living, capable of being studied deeply and placed in service to the present.
Through all of these accomplishments, he remained first and finally an ācārya. The scholarship, the institutions, the manuscripts, the technology, the temples, and the students belonged to one larger work: receiving an inheritance of immense depth and carrying it forward faithfully.
He was also our teacher. His generosity, encouragement, and guidance helped make Mysore Yoga Traditions possible. This account is therefore more than a record of an important scholar's accomplishments. It is offered in gratitude to a teacher, and in reverence for the lineage he carried.
What follows traces his life and work in greater detail.
His life
His early years and formation
He was born on 26 August 1936, the eldest son of Paṇḍita Rāja Śrī U.Ve. Āḻvār Tirumala Iyengar Swami and Smt M.A. Śiṅgamma. His first education was at his father's feet at Melkōṭe, in an atmosphere of scholarship, piety, and self-discipline, and it was exacting. Very often he had to balance the ordinary delights of a childhood against the responsibilities of a tradition he was heir to.
From a very early age he displayed an intense curiosity, and often felt he had to probe deeper and find out how a thing worked and why it was as it was. As a boy he dismantled a brand new wooden toy from Channapatna to find out what lay inside, while his sibling preserved the other one intact. His father scolded him for it. The same curiosity stayed with him, and years later it led him to put early computers to work on Sanskrit manuscript analysis, at a time when few in India had thought to bring the two together.
He described himself as a neo-traditionalist. Firmly rooted in the śāstric inheritance and in time-tested values, and entirely open to new ideas, new trends, and new technology wherever they served those values rather than eroding them.
When his secondary examination results came back excellent, his father and the śiṣyas concealed them from him, for fear that first-class marks would draw him toward modern education and away from the paramparā. His first reaction was resentment. He came to understand it, in time, as the deepest expression of care anyone had shown him. The tradition had to be carried. He was the one who could carry it.
He accepted it, and he took his formal education as far as it would go. He read Sanskrit and Philosophy for his B.A. at Mysore University and placed eighth. He took his M.A. in Sanskrit at Madras University in first class first rank with two gold medals, then qualified as Navya Nyāya Vidvān, again first class first rank, winning the President of India's Gold Medal. He added Rāṣṭra Bhāṣā Pravīṇa in Hindi and a certificate course in German. He taught Sanskrit at the Government College in Chitradurga, then in Bangalore, then for ten years at the Postgraduate Department of Sanskrit at Bangalore University, where he was Assistant Professor and Reader. For a time he also lectured part-time in Ayurveda at the Jayachamarajendra Ayurvedic College in Bangalore.
Then in 1977 he persuaded the Government of Karnataka to commission an Academy for Sanskrit Research at Melkōṭe. The Government gave him fifteen acres of barren, rocky wasteland and no assurance of money or support of any kind. He resigned his professorship and took it on. He was its Director from 1980 to 2004.
His wife, Ammangar M.A. Godhā, stood with him throughout. She provided physical and moral support, shared the pressures and the disappointments, gave wise counsel, held the family steady through every crisis, and ran the household while he was building the Academy. Swami himself said that at least sixty per cent of the credit for everything the Academy achieved belongs to her. No account of his life is complete without her.
He attained final liberation on 15 May 2021, at the age of eighty-four.
The scholar
Education, posts, and honours
His education, formal and informal
School
Akṣarābhyāsa, the beginning of letters, at his father's feet at Melkōṭe. In his sixth year he joined the Government Boys Primary School there, where the teachers who marked him most were the head master Nārāyaṇa Iyengar and a master named Karle Chinnayya. He took a double promotion and moved in his tenth year to the Government Boys School at Malleswaram, where he won first prize for essay writing and was tutored at home in mathematics by Krishna Murthy. A Christian named Jagadish taught him to swim at the Malleswaram pool. He stayed during this period with M.A. Parthasarathy, whose wife Aravindamma tutored, guided, and cared for him.
College
B.A. from Mysore University with Sanskrit and Philosophy as majors, placing eighth. M.A. in Sanskrit from Madras University, first class first rank, with two gold medals. Navya Nyāya Vidvān, first class first rank, winning the President of India's Gold Medal. Alongside these he took Rāṣṭra Bhāṣā Pravīṇa in Hindi and a language certificate course in German.
His informal education
He held that the informal education of the early years does more to shape a child's character than schooling does, and he named the people who gave him his.
His mother, Smt M.A. Śiṅgamma, taught him bio-farming and horticulture and set him to cultivating a garden of plantain trees behind the house at Melkōṭe. His lifelong expertise in that field started there.
Sri M.K. Sampath taught him to judge cattle in the traditional way, reading a beast's characteristics by knowledge, practice, and a measure of intuition. Most veterinary doctors, Swami observed, never encounter that body of practical information at all.
Nallar Narāyaṇa Iyengar Swami trained him in selecting vegetables and fruit at the weekly santhe, including the bargaining. Nallar's method was to approach a seller in the morning and offer to buy at more than double the market rate, then walk away before the delighted seller could answer. Returning at dusk, he would find the seller ready to sell at that inflated figure, scold him that nobody would pay even the market rate, and offer a quarter of it. Most sellers, chastened, agreed, or at least gave a heavy discount, since it was closing time. To one man asking too much for a jackfruit he said that only if men became pregnant and started craving jackfruit would anyone pay so much. Watching him peel a mango with a blade, Swami recalled, was almost like watching a classical dancer, the arms and the trunk moving gracefully. He could cut a patch of grass so neatly that it looked like carpet afterwards, and he was always immaculately dressed in brilliant white.
Swami also remembered a cowherd called Mari Gowda, who handled some sixty head of cattle with ease. He named every cow after its owner, and when he called one by name it obeyed him, even from a distance.
Teaching posts and academic positions
Teaching
- Lecturer and Head of Sanskrit, Government Arts and Science College, Chitradurga, for three and a half years.
- Lecturer in Sanskrit, Government Arts and Science College, Bangalore, for a year.
- Part-time lecturer in Ayurveda, Jayachamarajendra Ayurvedic College, Bangalore.
- Assistant Professor and Reader in Sanskrit, Postgraduate Department of Sanskrit, Bangalore University, 1970 to 1980.
- Part-time Professor teaching postgraduate classes at MES College, Bangalore.
- Free service teaching classes conducted by the Ubhaya Vedānta Pravartana Sabhā.
Examining and doctoral work
- Member of the Doctoral Committee and Academic Council of S-VYASA, Jigani.
- Member, Board of Studies and D.Litt. Award Committee, Postgraduate Department of Vaishnavism, Madras University.
- Member, Boards of Examiners and Boards of Studies, Gulbarga and Bangalore Universities.
- Member, Board of Studies, Kuvempu University, Shimoga.
He continued to guide students of Sanskrit and the śāstras at M.A., M.Phil., and doctoral level for the rest of his life.
Committees, boards, and national bodies
- Member, Central Sanskrit Board, Government of India, New Delhi, the apex body for Sanskrit.
- Senate Member, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati.
- Member, Executive Committee, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi.
- Member, Planning Commission Language Cell for Sanskrit, New Delhi.
- Member, Advisory Committee for Technology Development of Indian Languages, Ministry of Information Technology.
- Member, IISKI Code Revision Committee, Ministry of Information Technology.
- Member, Supervisory Committee, Digital Library of India project, Carnegie Mellon University.
- Member, Committee for the Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune.
- Member, Implementation Committee for the Dictionary of Indian Culture, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla.
- Member, Committee for Revision of the Karnataka Gazetteer.
- Senior Honorary Advisor, Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Traditions, Bangalore.
- Honorary Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and Senior Advisor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore.
He was also Chief Executive of ACTRIS, the ASR Centre for Technology Development in Sanskrit, a subsidiary of the Academy at Melkōṭe, where research went into extracting insights from the śāstras and turning them into working software for Sanskrit and other Indian languages.
Books, papers, and publications
He wrote more than a hundred books. He was a voracious reader and a prolific author, publishing across philosophy, Sanskrit, Indian culture, Sanskrit and information technology, and Sanskrit and science, and presenting papers on all five.
Separately from his own authorship, the Academy of Sanskrit Research published nearly fifty volumes of original research under his direction, at an average output of around a hundred printed pages a year.
Honours and awards
- The President of India's Award for outstanding scholarship and contribution to Sanskrit.
- The President of India's Gold Medal for placing first in Navya Nyāya.
- The title Citizen of the Age of Enlightenment, conferred by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Academy of Science.
- The title Rāmānuja Pāduka Sevaka, conferred at the Mudali Āṇḍāṉ Tirumaligai, Chennai, in 2001.
These are among many others. The record set out here is not complete.
The Academy of Sanskrit Research, Melkote
He served as its Director from 1980 to 2004. The Academy continues today.
The Academy
The Academy of Sanskrit Research
The Government of Karnataka commissioned the Academy in 1977 and granted him fifteen acres of barren, rocky land. No money came with it, no institutional support, and no assurance that the work would continue past its first year. He resigned his professorship and took it up, and he gave the next twenty-five years to it.
Building the Academy
He arranged the transport of vast amounts of soil, water, and other material to the site. He chose the flora and fauna according to the sthala-purāṇa of Melkōṭe. Then he adopted the ancient ṛṣi-kṛṣi-paddhati, the method by which the seers of antiquity cultivated wild land, and let nature work freely. Before long a place that had looked like a lunar landscape resembled the garden of an old forest hermitage, with over three hundred species growing vigorously in mixed wilderness. He restored eight kalyāṇī ponds on the campus and landscaped it for natural water management. Every new building was blended into the setting so the ecology was not disturbed. In effect he re-enacted at Melkōṭe what his ancestor Ananthāchārya had done at Tirumala a thousand years earlier.
He found no time for himself or his family. He had to run around collecting funds that always lagged behind the demands, and to spend his reputation, his patience, and his energy on convincing sceptics, moving the indifferent, calming the suspicious, and defending the whole idea in front of people who were hostile to it. The hours and the sacrifices that went into raising money for the Academy are not countable.
What it held, and what it produced
An administrative office, store, library, conference hall, and hostel were built into the garden. Scholars were recruited, trained, and set to research. An in-house printing press was installed and the whole Academy computerised, with a desktop publishing system alongside it.
The library reached over 23,000 titles. More than 10,000 works in palm leaf and paper were catalogued, the important ones microfilmed, and real expertise in manuscript preservation was developed on site. Swami's standing was what persuaded families to part with manuscripts held as heirlooms, and in most cases he spent his own time, energy, and money tracking them down.
Nearly fifty volumes of research were published, at an average of around a hundred printed pages a year. Computerised semantic processing was developed. A museum was set up holding rare ethnic and cultural artifacts, icons, coins, and paintings, modest in size and excellent in content. Three all-India workshops were held, ten vidvat goṣṭhīs convened, and many seminars, teaching programmes, and short courses run.
Visitors came from every part of India and the world, from village pilgrims to the heads of national institutions. Some came for the Academy, some were at Melkōṭe to worship and called in, some could not have said why they came. Many wrote in the visitors' book in their own hand, struggling to find adequate words. Swami declined the credit and attributed it to the spiritual presence of Rāmānuja and the blessings of his ancestors.
Research projects he drove
He was the brain and the driving force behind these:
- Copper in ancient India
- Pāñcarātra Āgama
- Veterinary science in ancient India
- The concept of cottage industry in ancient India
- The concept of Sudarśana
- Ancient bio-farming systems
- Tools and technology in ancient India
- Conservation and digitisation of manuscripts
- Computational rendering of the Amarakośa
- Food preservation in ancient India
- Indian cryptographic systems
- Meteorology in ancient India
He was Chief Investigator on these:
- The Indian concept of cosmology
- Ekadantavidyā, Sanskrit speech synthesis
- Critical translation of the Śrī Bhāṣya into Kannada
- Iron and steel in ancient India
- Critical translation of the Tiruvāymoḻi from Sanskrit into Hindi
Software and language technology
More than twenty software programs were prepared under his guidance, most of them in Sanskrit and linguistic technology. The Academy's work covered grammar analysis, speech synthesis, language encoding, machine translation, lexicography, language-learning packages, and metrical analysis. Programs were developed on the Śrī Bhāṣya and the Taraka Mañjūṣā.
The research he hoped would follow, as he set it out himself, indicates the range he had in mind. Ancient tools for retrieving information on modern websites. Information security built on Sanskrit knowledge systems. Indian cryptography. Vedic mathematics in embedded software. An English grammar written on the Pāṇinian model so that semantic analysis becomes possible. A universal coded language based on the concepts language conveys. Speech synthesis and speech recognition derived from the Śikṣā texts and the Prātiśākhyas.
His wider work
Agriculture, music, and the arts
His interests reached well beyond the fields in which he held his degrees. He worked the land and kept cattle, he studied music seriously enough to be examined in it, and he acted and directed on the stage and on film. In each of these the same approach appears: go to the texts, find what the ancients had established, and put it back into use.
Agriculture, horticulture, and animal husbandry
He developed a zero-cultivation system and proved it worked. He put the non-aggressive farming practices of the Kṛṣiparāśara into use, and worked on the ancient methods of preserving soil fertility. He created gardens on the principles given in the old texts, including daivavanam, gardens for the gods, and gardens laid out for aromatherapy, and he worked on ancient methods of plant propagation.
On the animal side he spent eight years developing the Hallikar, the pride of Karnataka, improving the breed by selective breeding. He worked on developing desirable qualities in other Indian breeds, on making the rearing of Indian cows cost-effective, and on the Punganur dwarf breed and its milk yield.
The forestry work followed the same pattern: afforestation with an eye to protecting the whole living system, and the creation of the several kinds of vana named in the old texts, among them the artificially created forest, the reserved forest, and the Veda Vana.
Music
His sister M.G. Pushpa first exposed him to Carnatic music. His mother was a good musician who sang Tyāgarāja kīrtanas in the old style, and by his own account ninety-nine per cent of his family knew music.
The family elders opposed his learning it. They felt any musical education would be a handicap to a future Swami. He persisted. He learned informally under Yaggamma at Mysore, then took up the vīṇā for a year under Prof. Rajalakshmi Tirunarayan, a disciple of Veena Venkatagiriappa. He then studied flute for nearly three years under Prof. V. Desikar, brother of Veena Doraiswami Iyengar, and passed the Junior Examination in Instrumental Music in first class.
His lessons broke off when he went to Chennai to study. There he took vocal lessons, then studied vocal music for over a year under Sandhyāvandanam Śrīnivāsa of Anantapur. He then gave three years to Devagāna, the divine music of the Divya Prabandham, under Śrīrām Bhāratī, a disciple of V.V. Śaṭakopan.
He also set out the questions he hoped would be taken up in the study of music: nāda as yoga, music inside yogic practice, the impact of divine music on materials, the close relationship between bhakti and music, and an exhaustive study of the Araiyar Sevā as dramaturgy, melody, and rhythm.
Drama, film, and television
On stage
- Lakṣmaṇa in Bhāsa's Pratimā Nāṭaka at Melkōṭe, during the visit of Kadidal Manjappa, then Chief Minister of Karnataka.
- Alasinga Perumāḷ in a play on Vivekananda at Vivekananda College, Chennai, 1964.
- A Buddhist monk in the allegorical play Āgama Ḍambara, staged by Dr V. Raghavan's Samskruta Ranga.
- Rāmānuja in Bibī Nācciyār, during the Centenary Celebrations of the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā at Melkōṭe.
Directed
- Jankaraja Sabhā, a short Sanskrit play by Prof. K.T. Pandurangi.
- Bhāsa's Svapnavāsavadatta, under the Postgraduate Department of Sanskrit at Bangalore University, which won praise from scholars across India.
Screen
- Rāmānuja in the tele-play Dhanurdāsa, DD Hyderabad.
- Rāmānuja in G.V. Iyer's feature film, produced and directed by Iyer.
- The lead in the series Vijnam Meyjnam, Jaya TV.
- Interviewed on Udaya TV, and by NDTV for its series "50 Important Indians."
- Featured in the Saṃskṛta Saurabha programmes on DD Bangalore.
The research he hoped would follow
He kept a standing list of research he hoped others would take up. It is given here in his own arrangement.
On the environment: environmental protection as the śāstras envisage it, religious practice as a means of avoiding water pollution, the four puruṣārthas and ecological balance, plant and animal and human symbiosis, and how to live frugally but well without exploiting nature.
On chemistry and alchemy: alloys made by the processes described in ancient literature, solar panels built on the Aṃśubodhinī, and chemical processes worked from natural ingredients.
On psychology: a proper work on Indian psychology assembled from the fragments scattered through the śāstric texts, the brain as a medium for the functioning of consciousness, experiments on consciousness designed from the concepts in the different systems of Indian philosophy, and eastern and western theories of perception set against each other.
On water and the elements: ancient methods of water divining and water purification, the conversion of hard water to soft by traditional technique, and the generation of energy from the five great elements.
He also wanted the practical, teachable things built: language-teaching software that made Sanskrit, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Oriya, Bengali, and Punjabi a pleasure rather than a chore, multimedia packages on the life and works of each Āḻvār and each ācārya, self-teaching packages for the recitation of the Divya Prabandham and the stotras, and software to demonstrate the seventy-two melakartā rāgas.
The institutions he hoped to see established
He set out, in some detail, the institutions he hoped to see. A university for the study of Viśiṣṭādvaita and its comparison with other systems of philosophy. An Ubhaya Vedānta university turning out scholars trained in Sanskrit literature, the Pāñcarātra and Vaikhānasa Āgamas, the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham with its commentaries, śruti and smṛti and the Itihāsas and Purāṇas, the stotras, the Navya Nyāya vāda texts, the whole of Sanskrit Vedānta with its commentaries, and the Rahasya texts.
Centres for meditation teaching the thirty-two vidyās described in the Śrī Bhāṣya. Centres for spiritual counselling. An āśrama providing for anyone choosing the Śrīvaiṣṇava way of life in its pristine form. An institution for training temple arcakas in the Āgama tradition, covering not only ritual and recitation but public relations, oratory, and languages local, national, and international.
And a Sanskrit university built on science and technology, with departments of material science, veterinary science, astronomy, mathematics, hydro-science and water management, engineering and architecture, geology, gemology, food technology, chemistry, medicine, agriculture, horticulture, psychology, and the fine arts.
Many of these were already in motion at the Academy when he left it. Many remain undertakings for those who come after him.
It is not necessary that all your dreams should materialize. Dreaming itself is a pleasure.
Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami
Melkote and Mysore
His service to the town and its temples
Melkōṭe is a small temple town, and much of what he did for it can still be seen there. He worked on its administration, its temples, its tanks, its electricity, and its water supply, and he did so alongside everything else. He held that the town should be preserved as a place of learning rather than developed as a destination for visitors.
Services rendered to Melkote
He was responsible for converting the Melkōṭe Municipality into a Gram Panchayat, which opened the way to a development grant from the Minister of Municipal Administration.
As a member of the Managing Committee of the Cheluvanārāyaṇa Swāmi Temple, he had the Kalaśa Pratiṣṭhāpana carried out after more than a decade of delay. He had all the puṣkariṇī tanks cleaned, for the first time in two hundred years, and the famous Kalyāṇī tank cleaned with them.
He secured the sanction for proper repairs to the Nan-Muhan, the four-faced Gopuram of the same temple, which had been pending for several decades. He did it by going to the then Home Secretary of the Government of India in person.
Melkōṭe's electricity supply had been poor and erratic. It was his initiative and his personal standing that got a transformer sub-station installed and the supply radically improved. He was the first to propose the proper water-supply scheme now bringing water to Melkōṭe from Tondanūr. He had a number of buildings put up in the town, including the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā at 4,400 square feet and a choultry.
He organised and took part in the 600th Utsavams of Maṇavāḷa Māmuni, Vedānta Deśika, and Piḷḷai Lokāchārya, which had been held in abeyance for years over Teṅkalai and Vaḍakalai differences. As Secretary of the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā he was the driving force behind its Centenary Celebrations and their five-day cultural programme, and he recalled in particular the contributions of Smt Malati Singlachar and M.A. Yadugiri.
Through all of it he worked to keep Melkōṭe from being commercialised into a tourist centre, and to develop it instead as a jñāna-maṇṭapa, a hall of wisdom, without changing the ambience it had held for centuries. It is doubtful anyone else saw as far or as deeply into the spiritual development of the town and the people living in it.
Positions held in religious and cultural institutions
- Secretary, later President, of the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā, Melkōṭe.
- President, Divya Kṣetra Abhivardhinī Sabhā, Melkōṭe.
- Secretary, All India Ramanuja Mission.
- President, Ramanuja Jeevadaya Sangha, Melkōṭe.
- President, Samskriti Foundation, Mysore.
- Member, Managing Committee, Cheluvanārāyaṇa Temples, Melkōṭe.
- Member, Mandyam Srivaishnava Sabha, Bangalore.
- Member, Rajagopuram Pratishthapana Samiti, Mandya.
- Member, Āḻvār Divya Prabandham Project, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam.
- Member of the Publications Cell, Dharma Prachar Parishad, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam.
- Secretary, Sanskrit Association, Mahārāja's College, Mysore.
- Secretary, Girvana Bhasha Abhivardhini Sabha, Government Sanskrit College, Melkōṭe.
The people who stood with him
Ammangar M.A. Godhā. Through everything, she stood by him. She gave physical and moral support, shared the pressures and the disappointments and the pain, offered wise counsel, and steadied the family through every crisis. She ran the household while he was setting up the Academy. Swami held that at least sixty per cent of the credit for the Academy's achievements belongs to her.
Prof. M.A.S. Rajan, IAS. He gave Swami the official and moral support that made a Sanskrit research institute at Melkōṭe possible at all, in fulfilment of his father's wish. As President of the Academy he guided Swami through its affairs and led him by the hand into the successful implementation of one project after another.
Sri P.T. Narayan. A karma-yogi in the real sense. He could take up any subject Swami assigned him, however difficult or unrelated, and master it by diligent study in a short time. That quality is what let the Academy expand into so many new fields. He produced results quickly and often burned the midnight oil.
Sri M.G. Narasimhan. An outstanding software engineer who had worked overseas for twenty-five years. Inspired by Swami's mission, he came to Melkōṭe, giving up a lucrative career abroad and everything that came with it, and guided many of the Sanskrit and information-technology research projects to completion.
Sri K.T. Sundara Sampatkumaracharya. A close friend who stood firmly by Swami through every adversity, a pillar of strength and good counsel, and a superb orator who helped him past many obstacles in the Academy's early years. He died at forty-eight.
M.A. Rajalakshmi. Swami's sister, disciplined and diligent, and the reason many of the projects at ACTRIS were carried through.
Smt N.K. Kamala. Swami's secretary at the Academy. Her patience and perseverance gave final shape to many of the project outlines he dictated and had no patience to refine himself.
Dr. M.A. Alwar. Though never officially associated with the Academy, he readily offered his services to its development, out of sight, as a son supporting the work of both his father and his grandfather.
Well-wishers and close associates
The volume prepared for his eightieth birthday lists his well-wishers and close associates, with the positions they held at the time. It is given here as the volume records it.
- Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India
- Dr Raja Ramanna, former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission
- Dr Kasturirangan, former Chairman of ISRO
- Dr Roddam Narasimha, head of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore
- Sri T.N. Chaturvedi, IAS, Governor of Karnataka
- Dr N. Gopalaswami, Chief Election Commissioner
- Dr B.V. Srikantan, former Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
- Dr Srinivasa Madabhushi, Additional Director General, Geological Survey of India
- Dr Kutumba Shastri, Vice-Chancellor, Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, New Delhi
- Dr Vachaspati Upadhyaya, Vice-Chancellor, Lal Bahadur Shastri Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, Varanasi
- Dr Satyavrata Shastri, former Professor of Sanskrit, Delhi University
- Dr Yajna Narayana, Head of Computer Science, IIT Chennai
The list in the original runs longer, and includes senior figures from the Indian Institute of Science, the Government of Karnataka, and the Government of India.
Relatives who shaped him
He named the relatives who shaped him, and what each of them gave.
His father, Paṇḍita Rāja Śrī U.Ve. Āḻvār Tirumala Iyengar Swami, an epitome of patience, perseverance, and magnanimity. His mother, Smt M.A. Śiṅgamma, a hard taskmaster with remarkable management skills.
His aunt Aravindamma, an outstanding unconventional teacher who could tame any naughty child. His elder sister Vengadamma, also known as M.G. Pushpavalli, a stern and disciplined teacher. His younger brother Dr M.A.R. Iyengar, who supported him financially so he could study at Chennai. His younger sister M.A. Yadugiri, who supported his stay there morally and practically. His aunt M.A. Rukmini, who showered affection on him throughout those Chennai years.
The lineage he carried
The Spiritual Lineage
The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition holds that its philosophical transmission begins not with a human teacher but with Śrīman Nārāyaṇa himself, descending through a line of ācāryas whose realisation of Viśiṣṭādvaita, qualified non-dualism, was direct and unmediated. The Āḻvārs, the poet-saints of South India, experienced these truths before they were formulated as philosophy. Their outpourings in Tamil, gathered as the Divya Prabandham, together with the Sanskrit Vedānta, constitute the Ubhaya Vedānta, the twin canon of Śrīvaiṣṇavism.
The descent of this teaching is recorded as follows:
From Rāmānuja descends the particular Ācārya Puruṣa Paramparā to which this page is devoted:
The succession is shown here to the teacher this page remembers. How the line stands today is the family's own matter, and is not set out here.
The Śrīvaiṣṇava Community
Iyengars are a community of Tamil Brāhmaṇas found across South India and throughout the world. They worship Śrīman Nārāyaṇa and follow the teachings of the philosopher-ācārya Rāmānuja, whose system is called Ubhaya Vedānta, a tradition that gives equal weight to the Sanskrit Vedas and the Tamil Divya Prabandham of the Āḻvārs.
The word Iyengar is the anglicised form of the Tamil Aiyaṅkār, meaning "those entrusted with the five duties." These five duties refer to the Pañca Saṃskāra, the five rites of initiation conferred by an ācārya of the Śrīvaiṣṇava paramparā. The rites are personal and not named here. The word long predates its association with any yoga style, and refers specifically to this community of initiated Śrīvaiṣṇavas and the tradition they carry.
All Iyengars trace their ancestry to one of the seventy-four siṃhāsanādhipati, the principal disciples appointed by Rāmānuja himself to carry his teaching forward. The Māṇḍyam Śrīvaiṣṇava Iyengars trace their line specifically to Ananthāchārya, who lived in an agrahāra called Māṇḍyam in Karnataka before travelling to Śrīraṅgam to study under Rāmānuja.
After completing his studies, Ananthāchārya was sent by Rāmānuja to Tirumala, where he settled and performed the daily puṣpa kaiṅkarya, the offering of flowers, to Lord Veṅkaṭeśvara. His descendants continued to live in four villages near Tirumala, all named in memory of the original Māṇḍyam in Karnataka: Ilaiya Māṇḍyam (also known as Bālamāṇḍyam, four kilometres from Tiruchhānūr, built according to Ananthāchārya's own instructions), Gajalu Māṇḍyam, Tirumāṇḍyam, and Chinnamāṇḍyam. The word Māṇḍyam itself is of ancient origin and is inextricably linked to Ananthāchārya's name.
In the fourteenth century, a descendant of Ananthāchārya, Periya Govindarāja Wodevar, settled at Śrīraṅgapaṭṭana as Rāja Guru to the king. Later, Cikka Govindarāja Wodevar, after defeating a Vīraśaiva scholar in a famous debate before King Kṛṣṇadevarāya, was granted six villages in the present Mandya District. He moved there with Śrīvaiṣṇavas of thirteen gotra, naming the new settlement Māṇḍyam in memory of Ananthāchārya's original village in Karnataka. The Māṇḍyam Śrīvaiṣṇava community came into being from this moment.
Nāthamuni
c. 823 CE · Vīranārāyaṇapuram, Tamil Nadu
Nāthamuni stands near the headwaters of this tradition, and near the root of Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya's own lineage. Born c. 823 CE in Vīranārāyaṇapuram (present-day Kattumannarkoil, near Chidambaram), and known from birth as Araṅganātha, he became a Śrīvaiṣṇava ācārya of exceptional learning and spiritual power. He is credited with recovering the Divya Prabandham, the four thousand Tamil verses of the Āḻvārs, after they had been lost for generations. He systematised them, set them to music, and established the tradition of their recitation alongside the Sanskrit Vedas: the very foundation of Ubhaya Vedānta.
His encounter with his own teacher, Nammāḻvār, came not in person but in vision. Meditating beneath an ancient tamarind tree at Āḻvār Tirunagari, on the banks of the Tāmraparṇī, Nāthamuni received the lost teachings that became the Yoga Rahasya.
Centuries later, Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya, a direct descendant of Nāthamuni, made a pilgrimage to that same tree at Āḻvār Tirunagari at the age of sixteen. In a mango grove near the ancient shrine, he collapsed in exhaustion, and in that state encountered his ancestor, who chanted to him the verses of the Yoga Rahasya, the same text that had been lost for more than a thousand years. Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya memorised those verses and later transcribed them; they became one of the foundational references of his teaching.
Whether one receives this as visionary transmission or understands it as the way Śrī Kṛṣṇamācārya honoured and attributed his own inspiration, what is clear is that he never claimed originality. Everything he taught, he traced back to the ancient lineage, and to Nāthamuni above all. The place of transmission was the same. The ancestor was the same. The teaching flowed in the same direction it always had: from guru to śiṣya, across time, through the unbroken thread of paramparā.
Rāmānujāchārya
1017 – 1137 CE
Among the great ācāryas of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, Rāmānuja stands resplendent and singular. He inherited a lineage of deep devotion and rigorous philosophy, systematised it into the school of Viśiṣṭādvaita, qualified non-dualism, and then, crucially, gave it away. He was prepared to sacrifice his own liberation for the liberation of all beings, and was hailed as Kṛpāmātra Prasannāchārya, the ācārya pleased by compassion alone.
He was also a social reformer of rare conviction, drawing all people, regardless of caste, creed, or sex, under the banner of bhakti and prapatti: devotion and self-surrender. In the tradition he established, even Śrīman Nārāyaṇa could not retrieve a soul lost in the ocean of transmigration without the compassionate intercession of Lakṣmī. He accorded the Āḻvār poet Āṇḍāḷ the highest spiritual status, continuously reciting her Tiruppāvai as containing the essence of all the Vedas, both Sanskrit and Tamil.
Among thousands of disciples, Rāmānuja chose seventy-four to be siṃhāsanādhipati, those alone, in his judgement, capable of carrying the tradition forward. Of those seventy-four lines, almost all have ceased to function as Svayam Ācārya Puruṣa Paramparā, the unbroken, self-sustaining lineages in which the spiritual succession descends within the line itself, without recourse to an external monastic seat.
In the account this family keeps, the line of Ananthāchārya, known as the Ānandāṅpiḷḷai Paramparā, alone survived. And even within that line, branches arose (the Manikarṇika, Rāmānujapuram, Appalāchārya, and Ayyapaṭṭai lines among them), of which only one has continued in unbroken transmission as a Svayam Ācārya Puruṣa Paramparā to the present day: the line of the Māṇḍyam Ānandāṅpiḷḷais. It is this line that Swami carried.
The reckoning of the seventy-four lines set out in this section is the tradition's own account, as given to us by Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami and Dr. M.A. Alwar.
Ananthāchārya
Born 1053 CE · Siruputtūr (now called Kirangūr), on the banks of the Kāverī
Son of Keśavāchārya of the Bhāradvāja gotra. After early studies under his father, Ananthāchārya travelled to Śrīraṅgam and came to study Viśiṣṭādvaita at the feet of Rāmānuja himself. He arrived accompanied by several other scholars from Karnataka, including Choṭṭai Nambi, Maradur Nambi, and Tondanūr Nambi. But it was Ananthāchārya whose genius distinguished him, and it was Rāmānuja who saw it and drew him forward.
Among all the siṃhāsanādhipati, Ananthāchārya is peerless, and the moment that proved it is recorded with precision. During a discourse on Nammāḻvār's Tiruvāymoḻi, Rāmānuja expressed the wish that someone go to Tirupati to perform the puṣpa kaiṅkarya, the daily offering of flowers, to Lord Śrīnivāsa. It was a mission that meant physical hardship, the dangers of the wild forests of Tirumala, and above all separation from the presence of the ācārya himself. Among hundreds of disciples, only Ananthāchārya stepped forward.
"You are the only āṇpiḷḷai, the only true man, in this assembled gathering. You have shown your manliness by daring to go to Tirumala, surrounded by thick forests and wild creatures, in chilly weather, accepting separation from me."
The full Tamil form is Aananthān Āṇpiḷḷai. From that day, Ananthāchārya bore the name Ānandāṅpiḷḷai. All his descendants carry it still.
At Tirumala, working entirely alone, Ananthāchārya dug a tank he named Rāmānuja Putrerī, grew a vast garden of fragrant flowers from its waters, and from those flowers performed the daily puṣpa kaiṅkarya of Lord Śrīnivāsa without interruption. Tirumala in its entirety came to be regarded as a puṣpa maṇṭapa, a pavilion of flowers, because Lord Veṅkaṭeśvara, residing there, alone enjoys their fragrance all around.
The tradition preserves a number of devotional incidents, told and retold in the community, that show the closeness of Ananthāchārya's relationship with the divine, and the absolute precedence he gave to his ācārya's command over every other consideration.
The crowbar at the Tirupati temple
While digging the irrigation tank for his flower garden, Ananthāchārya was approached by a brahmacāri, a young Brahmin student, who offered to help with the work. Ananthāchārya refused; the kaiṅkarya, the service personally commanded by Rāmānuja, was his alone to perform. When the young man persisted, Ananthāchārya, in his fierce devotion to his ācārya's command, hurled the crowbar he was using and struck the visitor.
The young Brahmin, it turned out, was Lord Śrīnivāsa himself, in disguise.
The crowbar is kept to this day at the entrance to the Tirupati temple, and camphor is applied daily to the place of the wound on the Lord's image. Both are preserved by the community as visible memories of the incident.
Goddess Lakṣmī and the naming of the Lakṣmīthāthāchārya line
Ananthāchārya allowed no one into the flower garden he had created for the Lord's worship. But the Lord himself began to visit it secretly at night, plucking flowers and breaking branches. Unable to catch the intruder, Ananthāchārya kept watch one night, and saw Lord Veṅkaṭeśvara and his consort Padmāvatī disguised as a royal couple. He gave chase. The Princess was caught and bound to a tree; the Prince escaped.
When the temple was opened the next morning, the priests were horrified to find the Lord's chest bare, without the figure of Goddess Lakṣmī in her usual place upon it. While they were being held responsible for what looked like theft, the Lord revealed that his consort was bound to a tree in Ananthāchārya's garden. When the priests came to release her, Padmāvatī, in the form of a young bride, accompanied Ananthāchārya back to the sanctum and asked him to give her in marriage to Lord Śrīnivāsa. Ananthāchārya agreed, and the marriage was performed.
On that occasion, Goddess Lakṣmī addressed Ananthāchārya as Thāthā, Father. From this he came to be known as Lakṣmīthāthā, the father of Lakṣmī. In memory of this incident, the Māṇḍyam descendants of the Ānandāṅpiḷḷais have been naming their children Lakṣmīthāthāchārya ever since. The recurrence of that name throughout the lineage above is the trace of this single occurrence.
The Tamil tradition still sings of him as Veṅkaṭeśvara Svaśura, father-in-law of Veṅkaṭeśvara: Veṅgaḍavakku māmanār vāzhiye.
The snake bite
Ananthāchārya was bitten by a poisonous serpent and refused all treatment. When Lord Śrīnivāsa asked him why, he explained that he stood to gain either way.
In Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, Ananthāchārya is regarded as an incarnation of Ādiśeṣa, the divine serpent who is the eternal couch of Lord Viṣṇu. If the serpent that had bitten him was the greater of the two, he would, on dying, reach the celestial Virajā river and have darśana of Lord Vaikuṇṭhanātha. If he himself was the greater, he would recover, bathe in the Tiru Konerī tank at Tirumala, and have darśana of Lord Tiruveṅgaḍa.
Either outcome, in his understanding, was a gain. There was nothing for him to fear.
The two tanniyans composed by the Lord
A boy named Madhurakavidāsan, in fact Lord Śrīnivāsa in disguise, brought prasāda to a group of Ananthāchārya's disciples, who refused it because the boy did not bear the marks of a Śrī Vaiṣṇava. To prove himself, the boy recited two tanniyans, devotional verses, in honour of his ācārya, meaning Ananthāchārya. Both compositions are preserved in the tradition.
Ananthāchārya holds the distinction of being the only ācārya in Śrīvaiṣṇava history to have had two tanniyans composed in his honour by the Lord himself. Maṇavāḷa Māmuni had one. No other ācārya has had any.
Ananthāchārya was an ardent devotee, a great social reformer, and a teacher whose carama-parva-niṣṭhā, the conviction that the ācārya alone is the soul's refuge, was without equal. All Śrīvaiṣṇavas, and the Māṇḍyam community in particular, count him as the foundational source of their spiritual inheritance.
This account of Ananthāchārya is drawn and condensed from an article by Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami.
Periya Govindarāja Wodevar
14th century · Śrīraṅgapaṭṭana
The first descendant of Ananthāchārya for whom clear historical records survive. In 1380 CE, he received from the Mahārāja a gift of twenty-one villages in the Aṭṭiguppa Tāluk of the present Mandya District in Karnataka. He settled at Śrīraṅgapaṭṭana as Rāja Guru of Śrīraṅga Rāya, who was related to the king of Vijayanagara, establishing the connection between this lineage and the Mysore royal world that would shape so much of what followed.
Cikka Govindarāja Wodevar
16th century · Tirumala and Mandya District
A descendant of Ananthāchārya who was residing near Tirumala during the reign of Kṛṣṇadevarāya. As a young man, Cikka Govindarāja Wodevar turned entirely from worldly life toward rigorous tapas. His parents, fearing the line would end, prayed for his return to householder life, and the tradition records that the Lord himself appeared and asked him to enter gṛhastāśrama and serve from within it. He obeyed, continuing to serve the Lord with the same intensity as a householder that he had brought to his renunciation.
In 1516 CE, at Anegondi, he defeated the Vīraśaiva scholar Ārādhya in a famous debate that the scholars of Kṛṣṇadevarāya's own court had been unable to resolve. The king honoured him profusely and gifted him six villages in the present Mandya District. Cikka Govindarāja Wodevar migrated there with Śrīvaiṣṇavas of thirteen gotra, naming the settlement Māṇḍyam in memory of the original Karnataka agrahāra where Ananthāchārya had lived. The event is recorded in the Epigraphia Karnatica, inscription No. 115.
The Māṇḍyam Śrīvaiṣṇava community begins from this moment.
Periya Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami
Contemporary of Mummaḍi Kṛṣṇarāja Wodeyar · attained liberation May 1866
Eleventh generation in the Govindarāja Wodevar dynasty. He came to the Ācārya Pīṭha at a time when the lands granted by Kṛṣṇadevarāya had been seized during Tipu Sultan's rule. With no endowment to draw upon, he sustained the paramparā through cultivation of his own land and the devotion of his śiṣyas, a material circumstance that required as much steadiness of character as any debate or scholarship.
He lived in Mandya, in a house on Janārdana Swāmi Temple Street with a doorframe carved from stone, known to the community as the residence of the Svayam Puruṣa Ācāryas.
The pearl necklace
The quality of his character is illustrated by a single recorded episode. While distributing tīrtha to a large gathering in Mandya, he was observed by Mummaḍi Kṛṣṇarāja Wodeyar, who stopped, came forward to receive tīrtha, and was so moved by Swami's bearing that he placed his own pearl necklace in his hands. The string broke; the pearls scattered across the floor.
Swami did not glance at them. He continued distributing tīrtha to the remaining disciples without a pause.
Several days later the king invited him to court and asked him to become Rāja Guru. Swami declined.
Daśa Vidyā Cakravartī Āḻvār Swami
Born 1850 · attained the lotus feet of the Lord 5 August 1924
Second son of Periya Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami. He lost his father at sixteen and his elder brother shortly after, and ascended the Ācārya Pīṭha at a very young age upon the urgent request of the śiṣyas. He rose to it.
His education was remarkable in its range. He studied Sanskrit under Pustakam Alasingrāchārya Swami at Mysore, then went to Chennai for Sanskrit literature, Alaṅkāra Śāstra, and the Divya Prabandham, winning first prize each year in the Veda Vedānta Vardhinī Sabhā. At Kāñcīpuram he mastered Tarka under Kunnapakkam Śrīnivāsāchārya Swami. Madhuvamāṅgalam Embar Jīyar Swami of Śrīperumbudūr, impressed by his ability, taught him the traditional texts, and at the same Jīyar's instruction Āḻvār Swami spent four years at Śrīraṅgam studying the Śrī Bhāṣya, Bhagavad Viṣaya, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the allied śāstras under Tirupullungudi Jīyar.
He could give discourses in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, and Gujarati. On the Niẓām's birthday, he delivered a discourse in Urdu that so impressed the Niẓām he was rewarded in open court.
He was conferred the title Daśa Vidyā Cakravartī, Sovereign of the Ten Sciences, in a single gathering of scholars who recognised his mastery of ten distinct fields of knowledge. He established the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā at Melkōṭe for the annual celebration of Rāmānuja's Tirunakṣatra, which continues to this day. Towards the end of his life he lived at Melkōṭe, performing maṅgala śāsana at the temple morning and evening.
Public service and legal advocacy
Beyond his scholarship and ministry, Āḻvār Swami used his standing to defend temples and devotees in the courts. He prevailed in religious debates before the rulers of Baroda and Indore.
When the Hyderabad State Government confiscated temple lands at Sītārām Bāgh, he travelled to Shimla and successfully argued the case before the Viceroy's Council, securing an order that restored the lands.
When the Tāyār shrine at the Govindarāja Temple in Cidambaram was demolished to make room for the extension of the Nāṭarāja Temple, he took the matter to the courts and had the shrine rebuilt.
Leading lawyers and jurists consulted him on Hindu Dharma Śāstra throughout his life.
Tarkatīrtha Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami
Born 1873 · attained final liberation 1926
Eldest son of Āḻvār Swami. His early schooling in Chennai revealed exceptional ability in mathematics and science, so much so that the śiṣyas grew alarmed at what modern education might do to a future Ācārya Puruṣa and pressed for his return before he could complete high school. He came back to Mandya and resumed traditional Sanskrit studies at Melkōṭe.
Later he sat the highest examination in Navya Nyāya, the Tarkatīrtha, at Calcutta, placed first, and returned with a gold bracelet and the title that became his name.
The four hundred paṇḍitas at the Mysore court
When Nālvāḍi Kṛṣṇarāja Wodeyar assembled some four hundred paṇḍitas of his court for an impromptu open examination, every scholar present declined to face it except two: Vidvān Yatirāja and Vidvān Tarkatīrtha Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami, both disciples of Paṇḍita Ratnam Kuppaṇa Iyengar. Both answered every question put to them. Both were awarded the title of Mahāvidvān. The king thereafter addressed Swami simply as "the Paṇḍit of Melkōṭe."
When Vidvān Yatirāja, his fellow disciple, died suddenly in a tragic incident of poisoning, their teacher Kuppaṇa Iyengar was so bereaved by the loss that he came to regard Tarkatīrtha Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami as his gyānaputra, his son in knowledge. The scholarly inheritance Yatirāja would have carried passed instead to Tarkatīrtha Swami.
He attained final liberation at a relatively young age, in 1926. The scholarship he embodied passed directly to his son.
Paṇḍita Rāja U.Ve. Āḻvār Tirumala Iyengar Swami
Born 1905 · attained final liberation 1973, Chennai
Eldest son of Tarkatīrtha Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami, and father of U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami. His early studies were at Melkōṭe; he later mastered Navya Nyāya at the Mahārāja's Sanskrit College, Mysore. He spent time at Śrīperumbudūr giving discourses, then returned to Melkōṭe and served the Mahāpāṭhaśāla as teacher and, in time, principal, as his father had been before him.
He was conferred the titles Paṇḍita Rāja, Paṇḍita Prakāśa, and Vidyā Vācaspati. His teachings were remembered by all who heard them for their extraordinary clarity. He restored the temple chariot at Melkōṭe, the ratha that carries the Lord through the streets of the pilgrimage town, which was in ruins, raising the funds himself. He organised the Aṣṭākṣarī Mahāyāga and presided for years over the Vivekollāsinī Sabhā for the annual celebration of Rāmānuja's Tirunakṣatra. He entrusted the tradition to his son with everything intact.
How this lineage was kept
It is difficult, at this distance, to grasp the strain under which each of these ācāryas held their position. The continuation of a Svayam Ācārya Puruṣa Paramparā depends on something more delicate than learning or institutional support. It depends on each generation receiving its formation entirely within the tradition, on the children of the line accepting a way of life their peers around them have largely set aside, and on the surrounding community remaining vigilant enough to protect the inheritance through the years when the pressures upon it grow.
Macaulay's system of education under British rule was the historical pressure point. It sowed doubt about the value of indigenous traditions and made modern education the route to material advancement. The temptation to gain English-language qualifications and the security that came with them broke many ācārya-puruṣa lines outright. Even Tarkatīrtha Swami above, the brilliant young mathematician in Chennai, was almost lost to the line in just this way, and was recalled by the śiṣyas before his school years were complete.
The same pattern continues, in different forms, today. The Māṇḍyam Ānandāṅpiḷḷai paramparā has been preserved because each generation of śiṣyas and family members has chosen to protect it actively, not as a matter of inherited duty alone but as a matter of vigilance. The continuance of a thousand-year inheritance is not automatic.
Dr. M.A. Alwar
Senior Professor, Mahārāja's Sanskrit College, Mysore
Son of Śrī U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakṣmīthāthāchārya Swami. Formed within the same tradition, in the same household, through the same exacting standards of Vedic education and śāstric learning that shaped every generation of this line before him. Following in his father's footsteps, he continues the work his father gave his life to: the living scholarship, the institutional mission, and the spirit of openness that have always characterised this paramparā. He supported his father's work at the Academy throughout its development, without ever holding a formal position there.
He is Senior Professor at the Mahārāja's Sanskrit College, Mysore, and Managing Trustee of the Samskriti Foundation. He is co-organiser of the Mysore Yoga Conference, an annual gathering that brings together Sanskrit scholars and yoga practitioners from around the world to study the texts, philosophy, and practice of yoga at its source. He is our revered teacher.
He believes that knowledge is meant to be shared. This is not a casual conviction but a considered position rooted in the tradition itself: the door of Śrīvaiṣṇavism, as Rāmānuja established it, is open to all who sincerely seek. Dr. Alwar has extended that openness to the global community of yoga practitioners, people drawn to the practice that emerged from this very tradition, who deserve to understand the philosophical ground beneath their feet.
On studying with Swamiji: my personal relationship with this great teacher
I first met Sri U.Ve. Prof. M.A. Lakshmithathacharya Swami when I was filming Mysore Yoga Traditions. He was a great man, and I could not get him out of my head. When I went home and began processing the footage, he was the person who kept coming back into my thoughts. I realised at some point that I had his phone number. Eventually I decided to try calling him, and to my great surprise he answered immediately.
I was quite nervous. I told him that I kept thinking about the things he had said, and asked whether I could study with him. He happily agreed. I asked him to teach me Bhagavad Gītā, and he agreed immediately. I knew it was the central text of his tradition. He proposed that I learn the Gītārtha Saṅgraha, a thirty-two verse summary of the Gītā written by Yāmunāchārya roughly a thousand years ago. I happily agreed, and we started.
I had thought that thirty-two verses would not take long, perhaps a few weeks or a few months at most. My conversations with Swamiji continued for three and a half years, and we made it through verse twelve. Each of those verses is packed with meaning, and carries many shades and variations. And sometimes Swamiji would be in the mood to talk about all sorts of other things.
We gradually became friends, and I knew that I had found someone special. His words rang in my ears and still do. He had a greatness about him, and an incredible energy. As soon as I began talking with him I would feel completely at peace. His thinking impacted me and helped me in my own personal life.
I remember calling him at the usual time for a lesson, and he says, "Oh, how are you?" I said, "Well, sir, my father is about to pass away, and I am very upset. I am spending time with my family, and it is all very difficult to watch. I am crying, and I am just dealing with my life." He talked to me for a long time about that, and he said many things. He was a real mentor and a real guide and a real spiritual teacher for me, and he gave me great insight and strength in difficult periods of my life. His advice was to treat my parents as God and serve them in every way possible, to keep them happy to the extent that I could, and to regard it as a kind of karma yoga. That is putting it simply, but his words helped me a great deal. His worldview impacted my thinking, and I will forever be grateful to this great man.
For three and a half years I studied with him, and he made time for me every week. I would call. Sometimes he would be busy, and sometimes he would be travelling. I knew that he travelled and gave a great many lectures and engaged with various institutions. I knew he was a famous Sanskrit scholar, but I did not understand the full extent of who he was until after he passed away.
When he passed, it was sudden and shocking for all of us. At some point I asked Dr. Alwar if I could make a tribute page for him on my website. He said, "Sure, go ahead." Then I realised that I did not know very much about him as a person. I did not know his birth date, I did not know his basic history. Dr. Alwar kindly said that he would get me that information, and it took some time, but eventually he sent me a series of documents that had been part of a pamphlet for Swamiji's eightieth birthday. Only then did I realise that he was an actual Ācārya from an unbroken lineage, and that he had enormous standing. Their family comes all the way through the time of Rāmānuja in an unbroken lineage. Somehow I was not surprised, because when I spoke with him it certainly felt so ancient and powerful, and there just was a quality to his presence that is not easy to describe.
What struck me most is that he made time for me. He prioritised teaching above everything. He loved to teach anybody and everybody who was interested, and that was his dharma, that was his path. He never asked for money, he never asked for anything. He made time, he conveyed the teachings, and that was it. When I found out later how busy and how important a person he was, I was taken aback. I treasure those times, and I will never forget this great teacher. I only hope that I can remember and work towards a little of what he shared.
Andrew Eppler
A closing note
My deepest gratitude goes to Dr. M.A. Alwar and the Samskriti Foundation for their generosity in sharing this knowledge with the wider world of yoga practitioners. That generosity is itself an expression of the tradition, which has always held that the door is open to all who sincerely seek.
Śrīmate Rāmānujāya Namaḥ
Śrīmad Anantārya Mahāgurave Namaḥ
The wider history of Mysore, and the many traditions that meet in its yoga, is told separately at Mysore Yoga Parampara.