Biographical Sketches of Dekkan Poets/Vidyaranya or Madhavabhatt
VIDYARANYA, or MADHVABHATT.
Was a native of a village called Pampa, which is situated on the bank of the Tunga Bhadra river, he was born in the 13th century of Silivahana, and flourished during the reigns of Harihara-Roya and Bukaroya, Kings of Vedyanagar. Madhvabhatt was in very distressed circumstances from his birth, till he was forty years of age; he had a numerous progeny, for whose support he was necessitated even to beg alms. While in this condition, it is said, that a stranger who was a prophet, and who had come to worship the God Verapaksheswer, one day visited him, and taught him certain formula of prayers through which, wealth and honors could be attained. Madhavabhatt being duly initiated' devoted his whole attention for a considerable time to the abstracted devotion of the image of a goddess, and it is said, that the divinity being gratified with his prayers, became manifest in a human form, resembling his wife, and conferred on him the gift of wisdom, and pre-eminent knowledge, and changed his name to Vidyaranya, which being interpreted means a forest of knowledge. This poet wrote a very elaborate and luminous commentary on the Vedes, and entitled it Vedabhashaya. He assumed the habit of a Sanyasi and renounced all secular concerns, and his time was entirely taken up by intense devotion. It is said, that he had another interview with the Goddess, who revealed various events, and discovered to him some hidden treasure, which Vidyarnya bestowed on a stepherd of the name of Harihara, who afterwards became founder of Vidyanagar, and sovereign of the city. When he was about sixty years of age, he composed fifteen kinds of theological works, and called them Panchadasi, which he taught to numerous scholars, he also wrote a commentary on the text of Parasara, and called it "Parasara Madhaviam." This work was compiled for the use of Bokaroya. For that monarch, Vidyaranya, also wrote a work entitled Vidyaranya Kalagnana, which was a prophecy of the revolutions of the kingdom, and the deeds of the various sovereigns which ruled over it, till the subjugation of the country, by the Mahomedans.
Harihara having been much obligated to Vidyaranya, and admiring his talents and worth chose him as his prime minister, and intrusted all the affairs of state to him. His leasure hours Vidyaranya devoted to the instruction of several students. By the good management of this minister Harihara enjoyed great prosperity, and had his dominious extended on all sides. Vidyaranya, after some time, made a tour round several holy places, and at last returned to Pampa, with several individuals, whom he had confuted in controversy, and who become converts to his opinions.
When he found himself incapable, through age of composing any other works, he took great pains in correcting, and revising the literary productions, he had already published, and after having a great number of copies transcribed, he had some buried in the howels of the earth in different places, some secreted in excavations of rocks, and the remainder, distributed in mutts or colleges and holy places, reserving a few copies for the use of his scholars. The ten last years of his life, he entirely devoted to devotions and religious contemplations on the divinity; he died at Pampa, at the age of ninety.
Some of this author's works were dug out of a pit, by the emissaries employed by the late Col. Mackenzie, to collect literary materials in the ceded districts, in the year 1811. The characters in which these works were written, are mixed and obsolete, and but few individuals can now be found able to read them: the late Col. Mackenzie, however, by employing the most learned natives, has been able to get the greater part of these manuscripts translated.