Birthday of Madhvacharya, founder of Dvaita Vedanta philosophy

Madhvacharya Jayanti celebrates the birth of Sri Madhvacharya, the great teacher of Dvaita (Tattvavada) Vedanta, on Vijayadashami. Born in 1238 CE at Pajaka near Udupi in Karnataka and named Vasudeva, he took sannyasa as a youth and received the names Purnaprajna and Anandatirtha. His followers revere him as the third incarnation of Vayu, after Hanuman and Bhima. Madhva taught that God, souls and the world are eternally real and distinct — the Supreme Being, Vishnu, being wholly independent and perfect, and the souls dependent on him — and that liberation comes through devotion (bhakti) grounded in right knowledge and God's grace. He wrote thirty-seven works, the Sarvamula granthas, including commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. At Udupi he installed the famous image of Bala Krishna, found in a lump of gopichandana clay, and established the Ashta Mathas whose swamis serve the Lord in turn through the Paryaya. His tradition inspired the Haridasa movement of Purandara Dasa and Kanaka Dasa, whose Kannada songs carried devotion to every home.

No fast is prescribed.