Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (fl. roughly 700) was a Hindu philosopher and a scholar of Mimamsa school of philosophy from early medieval India. He is famous for many of his various theses on Mimamsa, such as Mimamsaslokavarttika. Bhaṭṭa was a staunch believer in the supreme validity of Vedic injunction, a champion of Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā and a confirmed ritualist. The Varttika is mainly written as a subcommentary of Sabara’s commentary on Jaimini’s Purva Mimamsa Sutras....
Shyama Charan Lahiri (30 September 1828 – 26 September 1895), best known as Lahiri Mahasaya, was an Indian yogi, guru and a disciple of the Kriya Yoga master Mahavatar Babaji. In 1861, he was chosen by his guru to revive the yogic science of Kriya Yoga to the public after centuries of its guarding by masters. He was unusual among Indian holy people in that he was a householder: marrying, raising a family, and working as a government accountant, he lived with his family in Varanasi rather than in a temple or monastery....
Madhusudan (Sanskrit: मधुसूदन) is another name of Lord Vishnu and is the 73rd name in the Vishnu Sahasranama. According to Adi Sankara’ s commentary on the Vishnu sahasranama, Madusudanah means the destroyer of Madhu.
Madhvacharya (IAST: Madhvācārya; Sanskrit pronunciation: [mɐdʱʋaːˈtɕaːɽjɐ]; CE 1238–1317), sometimes anglicised as Madhva Acharya, and also known as Purna Prajna (IAST: Pūrṇa-Prajña) and Ānanda Tīrtha, was a Hindu philosopher and the chief proponent of the Dvaita (dualism) school of Vedanta. Madhva called his philosophy Tattvavāda meaning “arguments from a realist viewpoint”. Madhvacharya was born on the west coast of Karnataka state in 13th-century India. As a teenager, he became a Sanyasi (monk) joining Brahma-sampradaya guru Achyutapreksha, of the Ekadandi order....
Mahavatar Babaji (IAST: Mahāvatāra Bābājī; literally; Great Avatar (Revered) Father or Elder or Wise One) is the name given to an Indian yogi by Yogiraj Lahiri Mahasaya, and several of his disciples, Sri Yukteswar Giri, Baba Nasib Singh Ji, Ram Gopal Muzumdar, Swami Kebalananda, and Swami Pranabananda Giri who reported meeting him between 1861 and 1935. Some of these meetings were described by Paramahansa Yogananda in his 1946 book Autobiography of a Yogi, including a report of Yogananda’s own meeting with the yogi....
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Prasad Varma, 12 January 1918 – 5 February 2008) was an Indian yoga guru, known for developing and popularizing Transcendental Meditation, and for being the leader and guru of a worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways including as a new religious movement and as non-religious. He became known as Maharishi (meaning “great seer”) and Yogi as an adult. After earning a degree in physics at Allahabad University in 1942, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became an assistant and disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati (also known as Guru Dev), the Shankaracharya (spiritual leader) of the Jyotir Math in the Indian Himalayas....
Matsyendra, also known as Matsyendranātha, Macchindranāth, Mīnanātha and Minapa (early 10th century) was a saint and yogi in a number of Buddhist and Hindu traditions. He is traditionally considered the revivalist of hatha yoga as well as the author of some of its earliest texts. He is also seen as the founder of the natha sampradaya, having received the teachings from Shiva. He is especially associated with kaula shaivism. He is also one of the eighty-four mahasiddhas and considered the guru of Gorakshanath, another important figure in early hatha yoga....
Narahari Tirtha (c. 1243 - c. 1333) was a Dvaita philosopher, scholar, statesman and one of the disciples of Madhvacharya. He is considered to be the progenitor of the Haridasa movement along with Sripadaraja. Though only two of his scholarly works are extant, they are characterised by their verbosity and lack of digressions. A few songs of his survive under the nom de plume Raghukulatilaka. As a minister of considerable influence to the Eastern Ganga rulers and later as the pontiff of Madhvacharya mutt, Narahari converted the Simhachalam temple into an educational establishment of renown and a religious centre for Vaishnavism....
Narayana Guru, IPA: [n̪ɐːɾɐːjɐɳɐ guɾu], (20 August 1856 – 20 September 1928) was a philosopher, spiritual leader and social reformer in India. He led a reform movement against the injustice in the caste-ridden society of Kerala in order to promote spiritual enlightenment and social equality.
The Nayanars (or Nayanmars; Tamil: நாயன்மார், romanized: Nāyaṉmār, lit. ‘hounds of Siva’, and later ’teachers of Siva’) were a group of 63 poet-saints living in Tamil Nadu during the 3rd to 8th centuries CE who were devoted to the Hindu god Shiva. Along with the Alwars, their contemporaries who were devoted to Vishnu, they influenced the Bhakti movement in early medieval South India. The names of the Nayanars were first compiled by Sundarar....
Swami Nigamananda Paramahansa (born Nalinikanta Chattopadhyay; 18 August 1880 – 29 November 1935) was an Indian yogi, guru and mystic well known in Eastern India. He is associated with the Shakta tradition and viewed as a perfect spiritual master of vedanta, tantra, yoga and prema or bhakti. His followers idealized him as their worshipped and beloved thakura. Nigamananda was born into a Bengali Brahmin family in the hamlet of Kutabpur in Nadia district (at present Meherpur district Bangladesh)....
Nimbarkacharya (Sanskrit: निम्बार्काचार्य, romanized: Nimbārkāchārya) (c.1130 - c.1200), also known as Nimbarka, Nimbaditya or Niyamananda, was a Hindu philosopher, theologian and the chief proponent of the theology of Dvaitadvaita (dvaita–advaita) or dualistic–non-dualistic. He played a major role in spreading the worship of the divine couple Radha and Krishna, and founded Nimbarka Sampradaya, one of four main traditions of Hindu sect Vaishnavism. Nimbarka is believed to have lived around the 11th and 12th centuries, but this dating has been questioned, suggesting that he lived somewhat earlier than Shankaracharya, in the 6th or 7th century CE....
Pāṇini (Devanagari: पाणिनि, pronounced [paːɳɪnɪ]) was a Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India, variously dated between the 6th and 4th century BCE. Since the discovery and publication of his work by European scholars in the nineteenth century, Pāṇini has been considered the “first descriptive linguist”, and even labelled as “the father of linguistics”.Pāṇini’s grammar was influential on such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield.
Patañjali (Tamil: பதஞ்சலி, Sanskrit: पतञ्जलि) was a sage in ancient Tamilakam, thought to be the author of a number of Sanskrit and Tamil works. The greatest of these are the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text. There is doubt as to whether the sage Patañjali is the author of all the works attributed to him as there are a number of known historical authors of the same name. A great deal of scholarship has been devoted over the last century to the issue of the historicity or identity of this author or these authors....
Prabhākara (active c. 6th century) was an Indian philosopher-grammarian in the Mīmāṃsā tradition of Kerala.