Jagat

The relationship of the Madhva-sampradaya to the Gaudiya Vaishnavas is one that has been sensitive for more than 200 years. Not only did it rear its head in the time of Baladeva Vidyabhushan, when the legitimacy of the Gaudiyas was challenged in Jaipur, but repeatedly since then. Bhaktivinoda Thakur wrote in his 1892 work Mahaprabhura siksha that those who reject this connection are “the greatest enemies of Sri Krishna Chaitanya’s family of followers.” In subsequent years, nearly every scholar of Bengal Vaishnavism has cast his doubts on this connection including S. K. De, Surendranath Dasgupta, Sundarananda Vidyavinoda, Friedhelm Hardy and others. The degree to which these various authors reject this connection is different. According to Gaudiya tradition, Madhavendra Puri appeared in the 14th century. He was a guru of the Brahma or Madhva-sampradaya, one of the four (Brahma, Sri, Rudra and Sanaka) legitimate Vaishnava lineages of the Kali Yuga. Madhavendra’s disciple Isvara Pur...

I have stated before that I do not think that there is a direct connection of the Gaudiya Sampradaya to Madhvacharya and the Tattvavadi Sampradaya of Vaishnavism. Srila Jiva Goswami directly mentions Madhva in Section 28 of Tattva-sandarbha as his final paragraphs in discussing the sources he will use in composing his Sandarbhas. This section is often used by defenders, beginning with Baladeva, of the Madhva connection to the Gaudiya line. Madhva's commentaries are stylistically unusual in that they consist mostly of verse citations and have little in the way of original prose statements, in the way that most other commentaries are written. And of course Madhva's citations have been a source of controversy since the very beginning. This is documented interestingly by Roque Mesquita's excellent study, Madhva's Unknown Literary Sources: Some Observations (Delhi: Aditi Prakashan, 2000). Jiva says the following in Tattva-sandarbha 28 with regards to Madhva's pr...