The story

Ku:re:sa — Sri: Kurattalvan — was born into wealth at Kuram near Kanchipuram. He left it at Sri: Ra:ma:nuja:cha:rya's side with nothing but a pair of cloths and the posture of a servant. The Govindacharya biography records that when he first came to the a:cha:rya's door, he had walked from his ancestral home carrying only his wife, A:nda:li Amma, and the Lord's name.

The central scholarly episode is the journey to Sa:rada: pi:tha in Kashmir. Sri: Yamunacharya's third vow had charged Ramanuja with a Bramha Sutra commentary in the Bo:dha:yana vriththi tradition. The only surviving copy of Bodhayana's Vriththi lay in the Sharada library. Sri: Ra:ma:nuja:cha:rya and Sri: Kuresha journeyed there, consulted the text, and — when the custodians refused to permit further reading — Kuresha, blessed with total recall, preserved the needful passages in his memory. On the return south, he wrote down at Ramanuja's dictation what the world now holds as the Sri: Bha:shya. This labor is commemorated separately in the naama sri:bha:shya:dimaha:granthaka:raka (#63).

Then came the Chola persecution. Tradition names the Chola king as Krimikantha, "worm-necked" — a title the Ashtottara itself preserves in the naama krimikanthanripadhvamsine (#84). Summoned to the court, Ramanuja was spirited away northward to Melkote in the disguise of a pilgrim; Kuresha, donning his a:cha:rya's ochre, went in his place. Asked to sign a declaration that "Siva is the supreme," Kuresha wrote instead, in the margin, dhronam asti — thandulo na:sthi ("the measuring-pot exists, but the rice does not"), meaning: Siva is a great deity, but not the Supreme. He lost his eyes for that sentence.

Blinded, exiled, and later restored through the intercession of Sri: Ranganatha at Tirumala, Sri: Kuresha never once spoke a word against the king. The naama pavithri:kruthaku:re:sa:ya — "he who sanctified Kuresha" — does not read, in the tradition, as Ramanuja conferring purity on a lesser man. It reads as the a:cha:rya receiving into himself the purity that Kuresha's sharanagati manifested.

Contemplation

An a:cha:rya is known by his disciples, and Sri: Ra:ma:nuja:cha:rya's stature is measured, in part, by the stature of Sri: Kurattalvan. A man who gave his eyes rather than utter one false word about Sri:man Na:ra:yana is the kind of devotee a true guru attracts. The contemplation for the devotee is that sishya bha:va — the discipleship posture — is itself sanctifying. Offer the 108-chant of this naama for those you love who are undergoing trial for truth's sake, and for the strength to stand with an a:cha:rya when the cost of standing is great.