Why is Ramanuja called Bhashyakarar?

Ramanuja, known in Tamil as Ramanujar (இராமானுஜர்) and also as Ramanujacharya, is called Bhashyakarar (பாஷ்யகாரர்), the author of the Bhashya, because he wrote the Sri Bhashya, his great commentary on the Brahma Sutras of Badarayana. The title was conferred on him in Kashmir by the goddess Sharada Devi herself. She placed his commentary on her head and named him Sri Bhashyakarar.

The story begins with a promise made to a teacher he arrived too late to meet.

Alavandar, also known as Yamunacharya, was the greatest teacher at Srirangam, and he had heard of a brilliant young scholar at Kanchipuram. He sent for him, but by the time Ramanuja reached Srirangam, Alavandar had passed away. As Ramanuja stood before his body, he saw that three of its fingers were folded. They stood for three wishes the acharya had not lived to see fulfilled, and the first was a commentary on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja vowed then and there to fulfil all three, and it is said that the folded fingers straightened.

The Brahma Sutras of Badarayana sum up the teaching of the Upanishads in a few hundred very short sayings. They are so brief that they can hardly be understood without a commentary, and a teacher who wrote one put his whole understanding of the Vedanta into it. Adi Shankara had written his commentary on them centuries earlier. Ramanuja wanted his own to follow an older and much longer explanation by the sage Bodhayana, called the Bodhayana Vritti. That book was to be found in Kashmir.

So Ramanuja set out for Kashmir, at the other end of India, with his disciple Kuresha, known in Tamil as Koorathazhwan, a scholar from Kooram near Kanchipuram. Kashmir was then known as the home of Sharada, the goddess of learning, and her temple at Sharada Peeth was one of the great centres of learning in the land.

There, it is said, they found the book, it was given to them, and they started for home. But the scholars there soon regretted letting it leave Kashmir. They sent men after the travellers, who caught up with them on the road and took the book back.

Ramanuja was heartbroken, and Kuresha told him not to grieve.

Every night on the journey, after his day’s service to his acharya was done and Ramanuja had gone to sleep, Kuresha had stayed up reading the Vritti. He knew it by heart, and he could recite all of it.

At Srirangam, Ramanuja began to compose his commentary, and Kuresha wrote it down on palm leaves as he spoke. Ramanuja set him one condition: if Kuresha ever heard something he believed was wrong, he was to stop writing.

One day he did stop. Ramanuja had described the self simply as that which knows. Kuresha felt this left out the most important thing about it: that the self belongs to the Lord and exists to serve him. He would not write the line. Ramanuja was displeased, and Kuresha only answered that Ramanuja was his master and he was his servant, to be dealt with as Ramanuja wished. That answer was itself the point he had stopped to make. In time Ramanuja saw that his disciple was right, and he corrected the passage.

The finished work begins by thanking Bodhayana. In George Thibaut’s English translation of 1904, its first lines after the opening prayer read:

The lengthy explanation (vritti) of the Brahma-sûtras which was composed by the Reverend Bodhâyana has been abridged by former teachers; according to their views the words of the Sûtras will be explained in this present work.

Ramanuja, Sri Bhashya

Bodhayana’s Vritti has been lost. All that survives of it are the passages Ramanuja quotes in the Sri Bhashya, and if the story of the road from Kashmir is true, those passages came home in Kuresha’s memory.

Years later, Ramanuja went back to Kashmir.

Once the Sri Bhashya was finished, he set out on a long pilgrimage across India, and he came once more to the home of Sharada. The goddess Sharada Devi herself received him there, and asked him the meaning of a line from the Chandogya Upanishad about the eyes of the Lord: tasya yatha kapyasam pundarikam evam akshini.

That line had once brought him to tears. As a young man in Kanchipuram, Ramanuja studied under Yadava Prakasa. One day, while he was massaging his teacher with oil, he heard him explain kapyasam as the hindquarters of a monkey, so that the Lord’s eyes were red like a monkey’s hindquarters. Ramanuja’s hot tears fell on his teacher’s thigh. When Yadava Prakasa looked up, Ramanuja offered another meaning. Kam is water and pibati is to drink, so kapi, the drinker of water, is the sun, and asa is to open. The Lord’s eyes are like the lotus that opens to the sun. His teacher was not pleased.

In Kashmir he gave the goddess the same answer, and she was pleased with it. She placed the Sri Bhashya on her head, conferred on him the title Sri Bhashyakarar, and gave him an idol of Hayagriva to worship.

The temple of Sharada is in ruins today. Its walls still stand beside the Neelum river, open to the sky, and the Sharada script, which was named after this place, still carries its name.

Ramanuja is known by many names. Periya Thirumalai Nambi named him Ilayazhwar as a child. Varadaraja Perumal, the Lord of Kanchipuram, called him Yatiraja, the king of ascetics, when he took sanyasa. Namperumal at Srirangam called him Udayavar, and Thirukoshtiyur Nambi called him Emperumanar. Most of these names were given to him for who he was. Bhashyakarar is the one he was given for his work.