Yamunacharya

Yamunacharya (IAST: Yamunāchārya), also known as Alavandar and Yamunaithuraivan, was a Vishistadvaita philosopher based in Srirangam, Tamil Nadu, India. He is best-known for being a preceptor of Ramanuja, one of the leaders of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. He was born in the early 10th century CE, and was the grandson of Nathamuni, a famed yogi, who collected the works of the Tamil Alvars.

Life
Yamunacharya grew up learning Vedic texts from Rama Misra, and was skilled in the concept of mimamsa. According to Sri Vaishnava tradition, as a teenager, he challenged the royal priest of a Pandya king, Akkiyalvan, to a debate. Akkiyalvan, when he saw the age of the youth, sarcastically asked "Alavandara?", meaning "Has he come to rule me?". He defeated Akkiyalvan by logically proving that Akkiyalvan's mother was barren, the king was not righteous, and the queen unchaste. The king and queen, impressed that the boy had understood the shortcomings of logic, adopted him. The queen hailed the boy as "Alavandar". In other versions of the legend, he is given half the kingdom. There is no historical record to show his reign, so it is possible that this happened in a small village, rather than the kingdom of Pandya.

After years of rule, Rama Misra tricked him into visiting the temple of Ranganatha. There, he had an epiphany, and gave up the material duties of a king and became a sanyasin, embracing the convention of saranagati. He is believed to have composed the Chatushloki and Strotra Ratna at that spot. Rama Misra handed over the reins of Nathamuni's school to him, including the collected Naalayira Divya Prabandham, and offered him the epithet of Yamunacharya.

After the demise of Alavandar, Srirangam was led by the latter's son Thiruvarangan. According to a legend, the deity Ranganatha himself instructed Yamunacharya to go to Kanchipuram and invite Ramanuja to Srirangam. He is also regarded to have received the following instructions:


 * The names of Parashara and Veda Vyasa should be commemorated on the earth by giving it to a person worthy to bear it.
 * Compose a commentary on Tiruvaymoli of Nammalvar, the most prolific of the Alvars.
 * Compose a commentary on Upanishads, Vedanta Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita.

Works
Alavandar, like Ramanuja, focused both on philosophical debates like Dvaita vs. Advaita. The bhakti prayers and the works attributed to him are in Sanskrit, although he codified the heritage of the Tamil Alvars. The works attributed to him are:
 * Chatuh Shloki - a popular prayer in praise of Lakshmi
 * Stotra Ratnam - a prayer in praise of Narayana
 * Siddhitrayam - A treatise on the concepts of ātmasiddhi (demonstration of individual self), īśvarasiddhi (demonstration of God), and saṁvitsiddhi (demonstration of reality in the empirical world)
 * Agama Pramanya - a work supporting the authority of the Pancharatra agama
 * Maha Purusha Nirnayam - a lost work eulogising the divine couple of Lakshmi Narayana, described to the Ultimate Reality
 * Gitartha Samgraha - a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita
 * Nityam
 * Mayavada Khandanam