Devotion, Lineage and Reach

Because the soul is real, dependent and distinct, Dvaita makes loving devotion (bhakti) to Vishnu the heart of religious life and the means of liberation, which it understands not as merger with God but as eternal, blissful nearness to and service of him. Madhva's theology thus provided a rigorous philosophical foundation for personal theism and worship, and it fed directly into the wider currents of Vaishnava devotion in India. He established his tradition at Udupi in Karnataka, where he is said to have installed an image of Krishna and founded a set of monasteries (ashta matha) that continue to administer its worship in rotation to this day.

The lineage produced influential later teachers, among them Jayatirtha and Vyasatirtha, and the Haridasa movement of devotional singer-saints such as Purandaradasa carried its spirit into Kannada song. Dvaita influenced the theology of later Vaishnava movements, including, through the Brahma-Madhva lineage it claimed, the Gaudiya tradition of Chaitanya. Today it remains a living school, strongest in Karnataka and among Madhva Brahmin communities, and it is studied across the scholarly world as one of the three classical schools of Vedanta, alongside Advaita and the qualified non-dualism of Ramanuja.