STOKER Polemics and Patronage | POLEMICS AND PATRONAGE IN THE CITY OF VICTORY POLEMICS AND PATRONAGE in the City of Victory VYASATIRTHA, HINDU SECTARIANISM, AND THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY VIJAYANAGARA COURT Valerie Stoker Luminos is the open access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation. Polemics and Patronage in the City of Victory SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES Edited by Muzaffar Alam, Robert Goldman, and Gauri Viswanathan Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sheldon Pollock, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Founding Editors Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the Uni- versity of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press. For a list of books in the series, see page 213. Polemics and Patronage in the City of Victory Vyāsatīrtha, Hindu Sectarianism, and the Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara Court Valerie Stoker UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advanc- ing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2016 by Valerie Stoker This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Stoker, Valerie. Polemics and Patronage in the City of Victory: Vyāsatīrtha, Hindu Sectarianism, and the Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara Court. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016. doi: http://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.18 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Stoker, Valerie, author. Title: Polemics and patronage in the city of victory : Vyāsatīrtha, Hindu sectarianism, and the sixteenth-century Vijayanagara Court / Valerie Stoker. Other titles: South Asia across the disciplines. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2016] | Series: South Asia across the disciplines | Includes bibliographical ­references and index. Identifiers:lccn 2016032554 | isbn 9780520291836 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520965461 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Vyāsatīrtha, 1460–1539—Influence. | Hinduism and state—India—Vijayanagar (Empire)—History—16th century. | Vijayanagar (Empire)—Religion—16th century. Classification: LCC BL1153.2 .S76 2016 | DDC 294.50954/809031—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032554 Manufactured in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xii Note on Transliteration and Translation xiii 1. Hindu Sectarianism and the City of Victory 1 2. Royal and Religious Authority in Sixteenth-Century Vijayanagara: A Maṭhādhipati at Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s Court 17 3. Sectarian Rivalries at an Ecumenical Court: Vyāsatīrtha, Advaita Vedānta, and the Smārta Brahmins 45 4. Allies or Rivals? Vyāsatīrtha’s Material, Social, and Ritual Interactions with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas 73 5. The Social Life of Vedānta Philosophy: Vyāsatīrtha’s Polemics against Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta 106 6. Hindu, Ecumenical, Sectarian: Religion and the Vijayanagara Court 130 Notes 143 Bibliography 191 Index 203 Illustrations FIGURES 1. Painting of an ascetic on the ceiling of the Virūpākṣa temple’s mahāraṅgamaṇḍapa 71 2. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, side with Viṭṭhala image 79 3. Yantrodhāraka Hanumān icon 82 4. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, front 83 5. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, close-up of front 84 6. Navabṛndāvana 101 7. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, side with Narasiṃha image and side with Bāla-Kṛṣṇa image 102 8. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, side with Narasiṃha image 103 9. Vyāsatīrtha’s bṛndāvana, side with Bāla-Kṛṣṇa image 104 MAPS 1. Vijayanagara Empire, 1510 (1500 border also shown) 5 2. Vijayanagara Empire, 1520 6 3. Land grants made by Kṛṣṇadevarāya to Vyāsatīrtha 25 vii viii Illustrations 4. Religious sites listed in the Praśasti of Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s inscriptions 35 5. Viṭṭhalapura 77 6. Mādhva sites in the imperial capital 81 PLAN Floor plan of the Viṭṭhala temple 80 Acknowledgments This book is the product of many years’ labor. One of the great pleasures of seeing it completed is the opportunity it provides me to thank all those individuals and agencies that have supported it. My initial research for this project was funded by a 2008–2009 American Insti- tute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Senior Short-Term Fellowship. While I was in India, the AIIS staff also supplied much practical assistance, for which I am extremely grateful. Later support came in the form of a generous National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2012–2013. The College of Liberal Arts at Wright State University granted me an extended professional leave to write the manu- script, while the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs covered the costs of several trips to South Asian research libraries in the United States and England. Portions of this book have appeared in other publications, all of which are cited in the bibliography under my name. I thank History of Religions for allowing me to reuse material I published with them in 2011 (vol. 51, no. 2). Portions of a chapter I published in an edited volume entitled Krishnadevaraya and His Times (2013) appear here courtesy of the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute of Mumbai. Taylor and Francis granted me permission to reuse material that appeared in an edited vol- ume, published by Routledge in 2015, entitled Scholar-Intellectuals in Early Modern India: Discipline, Sect, Lineage and Community. This book has benefited from the informed expertise of many individuals whose assistance has proven invaluable. I am extremely grateful to Dr. D. Prahladachar for generously reading Vyāsatīrtha’s works with me in Bangalore and for explaining, in masterful detail, their many subtleties. I am also grateful to Dr. K. T. Pandurangi who, over the course of several trips to India, read the works of other ix x Acknowledgments Mādhva philosophers with me. Together with his family, especially his daughter, Sudha, Dr. Pandurangi helped me forge valuable connections with local schol- ars in Bangalore and procure published copies of important texts. Madhav Desh- pande, Frederick Smith, Ludo Rocher, and Rosane Rocher each offered me valu- able feedback and encouragement when I first began to consider undertaking this project. Colleagues at Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life helped shape my thinking on my work’s broader implications; I thank Sudipta Kaviraj and Rajeev Bhargava for including me in those conversations in 2009 and 2011. I am also grateful to the Oxford Early Modern South Asia work- shop, particularly Rosalind O’Hanlon and Christopher Minkowski, for including me in an equally enlightening set of dialogues in 2013. In 2012, Anila Verghese and the K. R. Cama Institute in Mumbai afforded me the opportunity to meet with many other Vijayanagara scholars from India, Europe, and the United States during a fascinating two-day conference on Kṛṣṇadevarāya. At various stages of this project, Dr. Verghese also generously supplied much practical assistance, in- cluding taking some photographs for me during one of her own research trips to Hampi as I was in the final stages of preparing my manuscript. Kathleen Morrison and Ilanit Loewy Shacham took the lead in assembling an international roster of Vijayanagara specialists at the University of Chicago in 2015 to discuss the connec- tions between the empire’s symbolic and material cultures; I thank them for their efforts. I am additionally grateful to Ilanit for many informative conversations on Kṛṣṇadevarāya and for sharing her work on the Āmuktamālyada while it was still in progress. Also in 2015, Caleb Simmons and the Department of Religion at the University of Arizona organized and funded a workshop on maṭhas in Indian his- tory that clarified my thinking on this subject in several important ways. I thank him and his collaborator, Sarah Pierce Taylor, for pursuing this important line of inquiry. Leslie Orr, whose historical studies of South Indian religion have been a long-standing source of inspiration, read and commented on several of the book’s chapters. I am grateful for her acute insights and her encouragement. Less formally, but just as significantly, my work has benefited from the input of Yigal Bronner, Elaine Fisher, V. N. Rao, Ajay Rao, Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi, Gil Ben-Herut, Jon Keune, John S. Hawley, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Anand Venkatkrishnan, Michael Williams, Nabanjan Maitra, and Sucharita Adluri. Col- leagues in the Department of Religion at Wright State University, especially David Barr and Ava Chamberlain, have provided a stimulating and supportive intellec- tual environment. This book benefited from the extensive support and technical expertise of Reed Malcolm, executive editor at the