Medieval · 1017–1137
Who influenced Ramanuja?
Influences
Qualified non-dualist for whom devotion, not bare knowledge, reaches the personal God.
Ramanuja was influenced by Adi Shankara. That is 1 line of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Who was Ramanuja?
Ramanuja was a Hindu philosopher, guru and social reformer and the leading exponent of the Sri Vaishnava tradition. He broke with his teacher Yadava Prakasha and with the non-dualism of Advaita, and wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.
His Vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism, became with Shankara's Advaita and Madhva's Dvaita one of the three main schools of Vedanta. He held that the soul and Brahman are distinct, yet the soul can realise its unity with Brahman, and that bhakti, devotion to a personal God, Vishnu, leads to liberation. His ideas shaped the Bhakti movement.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Ramanuja?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Adi Shankara 788–820
The line of teachers behind Ramanuja
The longest documented line of influence ending at Ramanuja runs 2 generations back, to Nagarjuna.
- Nagarjuna
- Adi Shankara
- Ramanuja
Two steps away from Ramanuja
Indirect influences
- Through Adi Shankara: Nagarjuna
Contemporaries of Ramanuja
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Ramanuja, with no direct line between them.
- Solomon ibn Gabirol c. 1021–1058
- Anselm of Canterbury 1033–1109
Ramanuja by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 0
- Thinkers upstream
- 2
- Thinkers downstream
- 0
- Wikipedia languages
- 57 — #34 of 58 among medieval philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Schools and lineages
- Non-Western: Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mencius, Xunzi, Nagarjuna, Adi Shankara, Ramanuja, Dōgen, Kitarō Nishida, Muhammad Iqbal
Questions about Ramanuja
- Who influenced Ramanuja?
- Adi Shankara.
- Who did Ramanuja influence?
- No later thinker on this map is recorded as drawing directly on Ramanuja.
- When did Ramanuja live?
- 1017–1137. The map files Ramanuja under the medieval period.
- How rare is the Ramanuja card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Ramanuja in 57 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More medieval philosophers
- Augustine of Hippo AD 354–430
- Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274
- Avicenna 980–1037
- Ibn Khaldun 1332–1406
- Al-Ghazali c. 1058–1111
- Averroes 1126–1198
- Erasmus 1466–1536
- Hypatia c. 355–415