The story

When the persecution under the Chola king Kṛmikaṇṭha fell upon Srirangam, Sri Ramanujacharya was led away in disguise, according to the Govindacharya biography, and made his way westward across the Western Ghats into the Hoysala country. The episode that unfolded there over the next twelve years is remembered as one of the great kṣetra-uddhāra — re-consecration of a sacred site — in the history of Srivaishnavam.

At Thondanūr, Ramanuja encountered a drought-stricken land and a lake that had refused to fill for seasons. The Guruparampara Prabhavam preserves the account of his puṣkariṇī-abhisheka — a prayer-rite at the tank — after which the waters are said to have returned. He then encountered Biṭṭi-deva, the Hoysala king of the Jain faith, whose daughter he cured of a possession attributed to the Lord's own work. Biṭṭi-deva accepted the Sri Vaishnava initiation and took the name Viṣṇu-vardhana. The Ashtottara preserves this event in the naama viṣṇuvardhanarakṣakāya — "the protector of Vishnuvardhana" (#89).

The central event is the recovery of Cheluva-Nārāyaṇa. Sri Ramanujacharya is said to have been directed in a vision to an abandoned anthill on the Yadavagiri hill where the utsava-murti of Ramapriya — the processional image of the Lord once worshipped by Sri Rama Himself and by Sri Krishna's mother Devaki — lay buried. The image had been carried off to the Delhi Sultan's court; tradition holds that Sri Ramanujacharya himself journeyed north, called the Lord with the endearment Cheluva-piḷḷai ("beautiful child"), and the utsava-vigraha leapt into his arms. This episode is remembered in the naama dilliśvarasamarcitāya — "worshipped by the lord of Delhi" (#94).

He re-consecrated the temple — the naama nārāyaṇapratiṣṭhātre, "the establisher of Narayana" (#95), records this — and built the township of Melkote into a functioning Sri Vaishnava center. He composed the Yatirāja Saptati of temple reforms; he opened temple worship and the recitation of the Thiruvaymozhi to devotees previously excluded; he named the Tirukulattar as Thirukulattār ("those of the sacred lineage") and instituted their annual entry into the inner precincts.

For twelve years, while Srirangam waited, Melkote became the living center of the order. The naama nagarīkṛtavedādraye — "he who made a township of the Veda-hill" (#92) — is the tradition's single-line summary of those years.

Contemplation

Exile did not slow Sri Ramanujacharya. A lake that would not fill filled at his prayer; an anthill released a lost Lord; a Jain king became a lifelong patron of temple reform; a mountain became a city. The contemplation for the devotee is that the places we are forced into by circumstance can become the very ground of our deepest work. Do not mourn the displacement. The Lord may have sent you to that exact soil. Offer the 108-chant of this naama for the recovery of what has been lost, for the reform of the communities you love, and for the grace to labor twelve patient years in a new place.