Sri Venkatanatha (Vedanta Desika) (1268-1309 A.D.) was a great post-Ramanuja writer of the Visistadvaita School of thought. He was a polymath with more than one hundred works to his credit, covering several branches of learning like Nyaya, Mimamsa, Vedanta and Sahitya. His Yadavabhyudaya was commented upon by the great Advaitin Sri Appaya Diksita who paid beautiful encomia to the poetic genius of Desika. Desika wrote in Sanskrit, in Manipravala (Sanskritized ...
The 35 brief essays in this book provide glimpses of the variety that is most characteristic of Hinduism in urban south India today. By examining selected objects widely revered in contemporary Dravidian country gods, goddesses, historical figures, sacred plants and stones—the authors succeed at once in disclosing to attentive readers what in the South mirrors Hindu norms throughout India and what remains ineluctably local. Beyond that, distinctive details of ...