The story

Among the solemn vows Bhagavad Ramanuja inherited from his acharya Alavandar (Yamunacharya) was the promise to write a full commentary on the Brahma Sutras of Badarayana in the light of the Vishishtadvaita tradition — a commentary faithful to the ancient Vritti of Bodhayana, which earlier generations had honored but which had become scarce and scattered.

The traditional account, preserved in the Guruparamparai literature and retold in Govindacharya's 1906 Life of Ramanujacharya, records that fragments of the Bodhayana Vritti were said to exist in the royal library of Sarada Peetha in Kashmir. Past the age of sixty, Sri Ramanuja set out with a small band of disciples on the long northern journey — through the western coast, through Puri and Varanasi, through Nepal and at last to Kashmir — that he might consult the manuscript at its source.

At Srinagar, the librarians permitted him to read the old leaves but not to carry them away. His disciple Sri Kurattalvan (Kuresa, also known as Srivatsanka Misra), famed for his prodigious memory, read the text once and retained it entire. On the return journey, from Kuresa's recollection, Ramanuja composed his commentary.

It is here that the tradition preserves its most luminous episode. The commentary was not yet called the Sri Bhashya. When it was at last read aloud — in the tradition's telling, in the very presence of Sri Sarasvati at Sarada Peetha — the goddess of learning is said to have listened with delight and, acknowledging the commentary as the very voice she herself had waited to hear spoken, to have bestowed upon it the name Sri Bhashya and upon its author the title Sri Bhashyakara. The same tradition records that she gifted him a divine image of Sri Lakshmi Hayagriva, which has remained an object of worship in the Sri Vaishnava acharya lineage to this day.

On his return to Srirangam, Bhagavad Ramanuja offered the completed Sri Bhashya at the feet of Sri Ranganatha. The commentary — along with the Vedartha Sangraha, the Vedanta Sara, the Vedanta Dipa, and the Gita Bhashya — would become the doctrinal foundation of Vishishtadvaita for every generation that followed, and the name Bhashyakara — "author of the Commentary" — would from that day belong, in the Sri Vaishnava usage, to him alone.

Contemplation

The naama Bhashyakara shows the devotee that scholarship, rightly held, is a form of kainkaryam. Ramanuja did not write for fame; he wrote to keep a promise to his acharya and to place the truth of the Upanishads at the feet of Sri Ranganatha. His three gifts shine here: compassion (for the commentary was written so that seekers after him would not be lost), kainkaryam (for the Sri Bhashya is an offering before it is an argument), and sharanagati (for even Sarasvati names the work only because its author has surrendered the whole of it to the Lord). Chant this naama 108 times, and let even your thinking become a form of offering.