VALERIE STOKER
Wright State University valerie.stoker@wright.edu
THE MULTIVALENT CONCEPT OF TĪRTHA IN MĀDHVA VEDĀNTA
This paper explores the Mādhva Vedānta tradition’s distinctive and extensive use of water imagery as key to the tradition’s founding and historical development. It does this by focusing on two texts from the founder Madhva’s native Tulunadu region that centralize the concept of tīrtha. The Sampradāyapaddhati, a putatively 14th-century text by the first-generation Mādhva Hṛṣikeśatīrtha, describes Madhva’s founding of various tīrthas or holy sites consisting of ponds and wells in his native region of Tulunadu. By describing Madhva’s miraculous abilities to transform the local landscape with water holier than the Ganga, the text emphasizes the revolutionary nature of Madhva’s movement while carefully aligning it with certain well established and historically prominent religious institutions. Simultaneously, the text uses water imagery to establish lineages of authority between Madhva (whose name is etymologized as “sweet water” in the text) and his first followers, who are described as drops of rain nurturing the movement’s growth. The text thereby offers perhaps the earliest explanation for why Mādhva monks with leadership roles append the term “tīrtha” as an honorific title to their names. The second text is the Tīrthaprabandam, a 16th-century 99-verse poem by the Madhva monastic leader Vādirājaratīrtha. It is a more standard pilgrimage text that enumerates a variety of holy sites throughout the subcontinent that Vādirāja is encouraging other Mādhvas to visit. It does similar historical work to the Sampradāyapaddhati in that it charts the expansion of the Mādhva movement throughout south India and enumerates distinctive Mādhva practices that have emerged at these religious sites as well as the corresponding narratives that explain them. Both water itself and water imagery feature prominently in many of these locations. By examining these two texts, each composed in the Tulunadu region but at different points in the tradition’s history, we can understand more fully both the practical importance of water to the development of Mādhva religious networks as well as water’s related symbolic resonances in early modern Hinduism.