The true tradition of the Upanishads he contends has been distorted by “manifold opinions,” among which the doctrine of Sankara was no doubt the chief.  That doctrine was naturally distasteful to devotional poets, and from the time of Nathamuni onwards a philosophic reaction against it grew up in Srirangam.  Ramanuja preaches the worship of a loving God, though when we read that God produces and reabsorbs the universe in sport, we find that we are farther from Christianity than we at first supposed.  There is a touch of mythology in the mention of Lakshmi[586] but it is clear that Ramanuja himself had little liking for mythology.  He barely mentions Rama and Krishna in the Sri Bhashya nor does he pay much attention to the consort of the deity.  On the other hand he shows no sign of rejecting the ritual and regulations of the Brahmans.  He apparently wished to prove that the doctrine of salvation by devotion to a personal god is compatible with a system as strictly orthodox as Sankara’s own.

I shall treat elsewhere of his philosophy, known as the Visishtadvaita or non-duality, which yet recognizes a distinction between God and individual souls.  The line of thought is old and at all periods is clearly a compromise, unwilling to deny that God is everything and yet dissatisfied with the idea that a personal deity and our individual transmigrating souls are all merely illusion.  Devotional theism was growing in Ramanuja’s time.  He could not break with the Upanishads and Vedantic tradition but he adapted them to the needs of his day.  He taught firstly that the material world and human souls are not illusion but so to speak the body of God who comprises and pervades them:  secondly this God is omniscient, omnipresent, almighty and all-merciful, and salvation (that is mukti or deliverance from transmigration) is obtained by those souls who, assisted by his grace, meditate on him and know him; thirdly this salvation consists not in absorption into God but in blissful existence near him and in participation of his glorious qualities.  He further held[587] that God exists in five modes, namely:  (a) Para, the entire supreme spirit, (b) the fourfold manifestation as Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradyumna and Aniruddha, (c) incarnations such as Rama and Krishna, (d) the internal controller or Antaryamin according to the text[588] “who abiding in the soul rules the soul within,” (e) duly consecrated images.

The followers of Ramanuja are at present divided into two schools known as Tengalais and Vadagalais, or southern and northern.[589] The double residence of the founder is one reason for the division, since both Mysore and Trichinopoly could claim to have personal knowledge of his teaching.  The really important difference seems to be that the Tengalai or southern school is inclined to break away from Sanskrit tradition, to ignore the Vedas in practice and to regard the Tamil Nalayiram as an all-sufficient scripture, whereas the