NIMBĀRKA (fl. mid-fourteenth century?), a Telugu brahman, also called Mimbāditya or Niyamānanda. It is believed that Nimbārka came from Nimba or Nimbapura in the Bellary district (Mysore state), but tradition associates him mostly with Mathurā, the center of the Vaiṣṇava faith in North India. His date has been a matter of controversy among scholars. Since he refers to Rāmānuja's view in his commentary on the Brahma Sūtra, he must have lived shortly after Rāmānuja (R. G. Bhandarkar's conjecture). But Surendranath Dasgupta (1940) dates him roughly around the middle of the fourteenth century CE. Dasgupta's argument seems convincing, for this date fits well with the tentative chronology of the four Vaiṣṇava Vedānta schools—those that opposed the Advaita Vedānta school of Śaṅkara. Nimbārka was the founder of one of the four...