dear bhAgavathAs, > is no solid evidence other than hearsay that the sannidhi > of Emberumaanaar was constructed by Tirumalai Anantanpillai. > In epigraphy the first reference to the shrine is in the > 13th century or so, at least according to S.K. Ramachandra > Rao's excellent history of the temple. Does anyone have > any evidence to the contrary? The only evidence about the emperumAnAr sannadhi we have is circumstantial and words passed down through generations.. The cicumstantial evidence we have is as follows: 1. anantAzhvAn was the first AchAryA during/after rAmAnuja to reside there. 2. periyathirumalainambi was an elder contemporary of rAmAnuja, and hence chances are that he attained paramapadam earlier than rAmAnuja - so, he could not have built it 3. there is mention in thirumalai ozhugu about rAmAnuja establishing certain practices in thirumalai (i donot have a copy with me.. will search and provide data if available) - i.e. he was a venerated figure in thirumalai 4. given the above, and the general acceptance of srI anantAzhvAn's regard for rAmAnuja, it is very plausible that he built the sannadhi. In fact, the "satAri" in rAmAnujA's sannadhi is known as anantAzhvAn in thirumalai. The above does not, of course provide 100% evidence.. one may claim that the sannadhi was built later on and all these hearsay has been ascribed later... Sure, there is that possibility as well. Re: the book mentioned by maNi, the book is based mostly on the inscriptions present in the temple in its current state.. It is well known that vijayanagara kings did do a lot of temple building, and hence, the book may deal with only what is present in the current form! - The sannadhi may have been established inside the temple in a different form, and when the renovation/ building was done, it may have taken the current form - and hence, inscriptions dating earlier than 13th century may not have been found..So, even this book may not present the *complete* history of thirumalai.. > Varadhan has told me of the opinion that the periya (pedda) > jeeyar matha was started by Emberumaanaar and that the > chinna jeeyar matha was started by Maamunigal, but once > again I don't think there is any evidence for the former, > other than hearsay, and we know what that's worth. again, there is cirumstantial evidence.. there is a lineage of jeeyars starting from emperumAnAr/anantAzhvAn (who established the maTam on command from rAmAnuja and chose the first jIyar) present in the jIyar maTam. In fact, there is a large painting inside the maTam that one can see.. Of course, the painting is fairly recent (early 1920s..).. One has to accept that there was no vested interest in later days in "creating" such a lineage to come to the "periya jIyar maTam was established by rAmAnuja" conclusion. One difficulty with our Indian tradition is that there has been very little attention paid to "documenting" history like the western civilization. So, most of conclusions, one has to draw from cirumstantial evidence and "plausibility" of hearsay. This leads to *any* situation being plausible. So, one has to have a preponderance of circumstantial/hearsay evidence to conclude that something is "strongly possible". Also, a modicum of commonsense mighe be needed (e.g. the situation where "ALL the temples were vadakalai and have been converted to thenkalai, and due to the heroic efforts of some people a handful have been saved by being converted again" is certainly a "plausible" scenario, but it does not mesh with the data we have currently and is certainly not possible to be supported if we apply commonsense). But either way, anything, including rAmAnujA's life history as documented in 6000-p-padi cannot be *proven* by current standards.. adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan, varadhan
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