YĀMUNA (fl. c. 1022–1038), known in Tamil as Ᾱḻavandār; Hindu philosopher, theologian, and devotional poet. Yāmuna lived in the Tamil-speaking area of South India and represented a learned family of brahmans who played a leading role in the formulation of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition and of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school of Vedānta, which is most widely associated with the name of Rāmānuja. The Śrī Vaiṣṇavas made a major contribution to the development of Hindu religion by being the first Brahmanic movement to integrate fully into the classical Vedic tradition a popular, predominantly non-Brahmanic religious movement, the ecstatic devotion (bhakti) of the Tamil hymnists called the Ᾱḻvārs. This synthesis of popular or vernacular elements with Vedic or Sanskritic ones provided a highly influential model for a number of later Hindu theistic sectarian movements.

Yāmuna is...