Tulsidas (Hindi pronunciation: [t̪ʊls̪iːd̪aːs̪]; 1532–1623), also known as Goswami Tulsidas, was a Ramanandi Vaishnava Hindu saint and poet, renowned for his devotion to the deity Rama. He wrote several popular works in Sanskrit and Awadhi, but is best known as the author of the epic Ramcharitmanas, a retelling of the Sanskrit Ramayana based on Rama’s life in the vernacular Awadhi. Tulsidas spent most of his life in the city of Varanasi and Ayodhya....
Tyagaraja ( Telugu : త్యాగరాజ )(4 May 1767 – 6 January 1847), also known as Tyāgayya, was a composer and vocalist of Carnatic music, a form of Indian classical music. He was prolific and highly influential in the development of India’s classical music tradition. Tyagaraja and his contemporaries, Shyama Shastri and Muthuswami Dikshitar, are regarded as the Trinity of Carnatic music. Tyagaraja composed thousands of devotional compositions, most in Telugu and in praise of Lord Rama, many of which remain popular today....
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti (9 July 1918 – 22 March 2007) was an Indian philosopher who questioned the state of spiritual enlightenment. Having pursued a religious path in his youth and eventually rejecting it, U.G. claimed to have experienced a devastating biological transformation on his 49th birthday, an event he refers to as “the calamity”. He emphasized that this transformation back to “the natural state” is a rare, acausal, biological occurrence with no religious context....
Vachaspati Mishra was a ninth or tenth century Indian Hindu philosopher of the Advaita Vedanta tradition. He wrote so broadly on various branches of Indian philosophy that later Indian scholars called him “one for whom all systems are his own”, or in Sanskrit, a sarva-tantra-sva-tantra. Vācaspati Miśra was a prolific scholar and his writings are extensive, including bhasya (commentaries) on key texts of almost every 9th-century school of Hindu philosophy with notes on non-Hindu or nāstika traditions such as Buddhism and Carvaka....
Sri Vadiraja Tirtharu (c.1480 – c.1600) was a Dvaita philosopher, poet, traveller and mystic. A polymath of his time, he authored many works, often polemical, on Madhva theology and metaphysics. Additionally, he composed numerous poems and as the pontiff of Sodhe Mutt, renovated the temple complex at Udupi and established the Paryaya system of worship. He is also credited with enriching the Kannada literature of the time by translating Madhvacharya’s works to Kannada, giving impetus and contributing to the Haridasa movement....
Vallabhacharya (1479–1531 CE), also known as Vallabha and Vishnuswami, or Vallabha Acharya, was an Indian philosopher who founded the Krishna-centered PushtiMarg sect of Vaishnavism in the Braj region of India,and the philosophy of Shuddha advaita (Pure Non-dualism). Vallabha was born in a Telugu Tailang Brahmin family that had been living in Varanasi, who escaped to Champaran of Chhattisgarh state while expecting Vallabha, expecting a Muslim invasion, which ultimately didn’t happen, during the late 15th century....
Thiruvalluvar (Tamil: திருவள்ளுவர்), commonly known as Valluvar, was a celebrated Tamil poet and philosopher. He is best known as the author of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, a collection of couplets on ethics, political and economical matters, and love. The text is considered an exceptional and widely cherished work of the Tamil literature.Almost no authentic information is available about Valluvar, states Kamil Zvelebil – a scholar of Tamil literature. His life and likely background are variously inferred from his literary works by different biographers....
Valmiki (; Sanskrit: वाल्मीकि, Vālmīki [ʋɑːlmiːki]) is celebrated as the harbinger-poet in Sanskrit literature. The epic Ramayana, dated variously from the 5th century BCE to first century BCE, is attributed to him, based on the attribution in the text itself. He is revered as Ādi Kavi, the first poet, author of Ramayana, the first epic poem. The Ramayana, originally written by Valmiki, consists of 24,000 shlokas and seven cantos (kaṇḍas). The Ramayana is composed of about 480,002 words, being a quarter of the length of the full text of the Mahabharata or about four times the length of the Iliad....
Vashista (Sanskrit: वसिष्ठ, IAST: Vasiṣṭha) is one of the oldest and most revered Vedic rishis or sages. He is one of the Saptarishis (seven great Rishis) of India. Vashistha is credited as the chief author of Mandala 7 of the Rigveda. Vashishtha and his family are mentioned in Rigvedic verse 10.167.4, other Rigvedic mandalas and in many Vedic texts. His ideas have been influential and he was called the first sage of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy by Adi Shankara....
Sri Vedanta Desikan (Swami Desika, Swami Vedanta Desika, Thoopul Nigamaantha Desikan) (1268–1369)) was an Indian polymath who wrote philosophical as well as religious and poetical works in several languages, including Sanskrit, Maṇipravāḷa—a Sanskritised form of literary Tamil—and Tamil. He was an Indian philosopher, Sri Vaishnava guru, and one of the most brilliant stalwarts of Sri Vaishnavism in the post-Ramanuja period. He was a Hindu devotee, poet, Master of Acharyas ( desikan) and a logician and mathematician....
Vidyaranya (IAST: Vidyāraṇya) is variously known as a kingmaker, patron saint and high priest to Harihara I and Bukka Raya I, the founders of the Vijayanagara Empire. He was the first Jagadguru of the Śringeri Śarada Pītham from 1380-1386.Vidyaranya helped the brothers establish the empire sometime in 1336. He later served as a mentor and guide to three generations of kings who ruled over the Vijayanagara Empire. Vijayanagara (Hampi), the capital of the empire, had a temple dedicated to Mādhavācārya....
Brahmarshi Vishvamitra (Sanskrit: विश्वामित्र, IAST: Viśvā-mitra) is one of the most venerated rishis or sages of ancient India. A near-divine being, he is also credited as the author of most of Mandala 3 of the Rigveda, including Gayatri Mantra. The Puranas mention that only 24 rishis since antiquity have understood the whole meaning of—and thus wielded the whole power of—Gayatri Mantra. Vishvamitra is supposed to be the first, and Yajnavalkya the last....
Krishna Dvaipayana (Sanskrit: कृष्णद्वैपायन, romanized: Kṛṣṇadvaipāyana), better known as Vyasa (; Sanskrit: व्यासः, romanized: Vyāsaḥ, lit. ‘compiler’) or Veda Vyasa (वेदव्यासः, Veda-vyāsaḥ, “the one who classified the Vedas”), was a legendary sage portrayed in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, and regarded by Hindu-tradition as the compiler of that work. As a Shaktyavesha Avatar (śaktyāveśa-avatāra) of Vishnu, he is also regarded by tradition as the arranger of the mantras of the Vedas, as well as the author of the eighteen Puranas and the Brahma Sutras....
Vyāsatīrtha (c.. 1460 – c. 1539), also called Vyasaraja or Chandrikacharya, was a Hindu philosopher, scholar, polemicist, commentator and poet belonging to the Madhwacharya’s Dvaita order of Vedanta. As the patron saint of the Vijayanagara Empire, Vyasatirtha was at the forefront of a golden age in Dvaita which saw new developments in dialectical thought, growth of the Haridasa literature under bards like Purandara Dasa and Kanaka Dasa and an amplified spread of Dvaita across the subcontinent....
Yajnavalkya or Yagyavlkya (Sanskrit: याज्ञवल्क्य, Yājñavalkya) is a Hindu Vedic sage figuring in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (c. 700 BCE). Yajnavalkya proposes and debates metaphysical questions about the nature of existence, consciousness and impermanence, and expounds the epistemic doctrine of neti neti (“not this, not this”) to discover the universal Self and Ātman. Texts attributed to him include the Yajnavalkya Smriti, Yoga Yajnavalkya and some texts of the Vedanta school. He is also mentioned in various Brahmanas and Aranyakas....