Word

Raghavedra tirtha

Sanskrit

In General

( 1592-1671 CE). Raghavendra tirtha is the most prominent Vedanta philosopher of Dvaita discipline after Madvacharya. He hails from south India in a Kannadika Brahmin family. He got married and had a son before he renounced world for sanyasa. Raghavendra tirtha served as the head of Madhva Matha at Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu from 1623 till his Samadhi. He established an ashram in Mantralaya for the spread of dvaita philosophy (in present day Andhra Pradesh) and had his samadhi there.

Raghavendra swami was a great spiritual luminary and a skilled Sanskrit scholar. There are 48 works goes to his credit. Some of them are: Bhagavad Gita Vivrti, Upanishadkhandartha, Ramacharita Manjari, Krishnacharita Manjari, Nyayasudhaparimala, Dasaprakarana.

Veda

His work Mantra Manjari is an extensive commentary on the Rigbhasya of Madvacharya. The work considers only the first 400 suktas of Rig Veda which Madhva had written commentary. But it is very important in the contest that it expound the esoteric meaning of the mantra and not the ritualistic meaning as done by Sayana.

Madvacharya and Raghavendra assert that Vedic mantras have multiple meaning. So, Agni in Veda means supreme person as well as deity Agni.