Rāmānuja's Gurus and Disciples

Rāmānuja did not begin what he taught, and he did not end it. It came to him from hand to hand. Nāthamuni went looking for the lost words of the Āzhvārs and came home with them and with their meanings, and gave them to Uyyakkoṇḍār, who gave them to Maṇakkāl Nambi, who carried them to Nāthamuni's grandson, by then a king, and won him over with a dish of greens. That was Āḷavandār, and he died before Rāmānuja could reach him, with three fingers folded. Five of Āḷavandār's people then taught Rāmānuja between them, each what he had been given to keep: one in six months in Rāmānuja's own house, one only after he had walked to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr eighteen times. Tirukkacci Nambi, who was none of them, fanned the Lord at Kāñcī and brought Rāmānuja six words from Him. And then the people came to Rāmānuja: Kūreśa, who gave his eyes; Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, whom he gave away as a dowry servant; the man who planted a garden on the hill and named it after him; the poet of a hundred verses; the man at the river; even his old teacher from the days before. After him Embār, Piḷḷāṉ, Bhaṭṭar and Nañjīyar took what they had been given and handed it on, as a lamp is lit from a lamp.

This book tells their lives, one after another, in the order of the line. Its four parts follow the teaching as it travelled: the ones before him, his gurus, his disciples, and the ones after him.

It tells them as the tradition's own account remembers them, and in the same voice throughout. When the Lord speaks through His priest, or comes in a dream, or sends His own food to a hungry man's door, it is told as plainly as a road or a meal, because that is how the people who remembered it told it. Where the remembered accounts differ, the book gives both and says so. Where they are silent, it is silent, and says only that the account does not say.

Read straight through, it is one long story. Each life also stands alone, and can be opened by itself. It is the companion to Bhagavad Rāmānuja, which tells his life. This one tells theirs, and what happened when they met him.