In Charisma’s Wake: History, Divinity, and Change in Early Mādhva Vedānta

Abstract As religious reformers who, since their origins in late thirteenth-century Tulunadu, sought to correct what they believed were false interpretations of the Vedic canon, Mādhva Brahmins have thought actively about processes of social and intellectual change. This article examines several Sanskrit texts attributed to fourteenth-century Mādhva authors that recount the movement’s origins and contemplate how past forces had corrupted the canon and what kind of circumstances might rehabilitate it. Of course, one of those circumstances was the advent of the movement’s founder, Śrī Madhvācārya (1238–1317) whose self-proclaimed divinity legitimated his reformist message. But while these texts elaborate Madhva’s supernatural identity so as to promote the Mādhva movement’s regional importance within Tulunadu, they also consider more mundane aspects of religious and social innovation. In the process, these texts acknowledge their divinely guided movement’s historical contingency. This acknowledgment complicates certain longstanding scholarly perspectives on premodern Sanskrit intellectuals’ attitudes towards change.