The story

Raṅgeśa-kaiṅkarya-rata — "he who delights in the service of the Lord of Srirangam" — names the long, patient labor that occupied most of Bhagavad Ramanuja's hundred and twenty years. Srirangam was his seat for more than six decades, interrupted only by the years at Melkote; and from these two temples his pattern of kainkaryam radiated outward to the whole Sri Vaishnava world.

At Srirangam, Sri Ramanujacharya took what he had received from his acharyas — the Ubhaya Vedanta, the legacy of the Alvars and of Yamunacharya — and gave it a living body. The Guruparamparai and the biographical tradition recorded by Govindacharya describe how he ordered the daily worship of Sri Ranganatha, the cycle of festivals, the responsibilities of the archakas and of those who sang the Divya Prabandham. He is remembered as having assigned seventy-four simhasanadhipatis, acharyas charged with carrying the teaching forward, so that the work of the temple would not depend on any one life.

At Melkote — Tirunarayanapuram — the same discipline was applied to a shrine he himself had helped to recover. Arriving in his eighties, he stayed roughly twelve years. He uncovered the image of Sri Tirunarayana that tradition held had been lost, and he arranged for the processional deity of Sri Sampath Kumaran to be brought from the north. He then set the temple's administration in order: families were given settled duties, festivals were defined, the forest communities who had helped him were woven into the ritual life as Thirukkulattar. The Melkote record notes that the patterns Ramanujacharya established there have endured for more than nine hundred years.

None of this was innovation for its own sake. It was kainkaryam — the acharya's delight in arranging every stone, every offering, every voice so that Sri Ranganatha and Sri Tirunarayana might be served worthily by generations who would never know his face.

Contemplation

To call upon Bhagavad Ramanuja as Raṅgeśa-kaiṅkarya-rata is to be reminded that service is not a lower path than contemplation; in our sampradaya it is the flower of contemplation. The acharya spent his long life arranging small, unseen things — a festival date, a share of prasadam, a family's duty — because each was an offering laid at the feet of Sri Ranganatha. The kainkaryam we take up in our own households and temples is the same fabric, woven a little further. Chant the Ashtakshara — Om Namo Narayanaya — one hundred and eight times, and return to the work with joy.