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Page25
Hence they were
given the title of Ubhaya Vedantins; the first of the Acaryas is Nathamuni, who raised the
Prabandham to the status of a Veda in public as well as private worship. The second great
Acarya, Yamuna, established the orthodoxy of the Pancaratra Agamas and laid the
foundations on which his successor Ramanuja in the twelfth century A.D. built his famous
system of philosophy known as Vigapdvaita or organic Monism.
Ramanuja's system is best studied in his Vedartha Sangraha, his
commentary on the Gita, and, above all, in his Sri Bhasya, which is a commentary on the
Vedanta Sutras. It is a theistic system which, with its insistence on the personality of
God and His loving kindness to men and the ultimate reality of the human soul and the
world, is calculated to satisfy the religious instincts of humanity more than the pure
philosophy of Samkara.
According to, Ramanuja, the Absolute is not impersonal, but a
personality endowed with all the glorious qualities we know of, such as omniscience,
omnipotence and boundless love. So God is saguna only, and not nirguna. The Vedic texts
which deny qualities to Him should be interpreted as meaning that He has no such lower
qualities - as sorrow, change, mortality, etc. The plurality that is involved in the idea
of the personality of God exists in Himself. For He has two inseparable Prakaras or modes,
namely, the world and souls.
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