A Question That Divides the Vadakalai and Tenkalai Schools

Exactly how far Sri's mediation goes is one of the questions on which the Sri Vaishnava tradition's own two schools divide, a dispute John Carman's study traces to differing readings of what her intercession requires from the soul. The Vadakalai school, following Vedanta Desika, holds that Sri's mediation, while genuinely effective, still leaves the soul's own effort a necessary part of surrender, illustrated by the markata nyaya, the logic of the monkey, whose infant must actively cling to its mother's body as she carries it. The Tenkalai school, following Manavala Mamuni and the earlier teacher Pillai Lokacharya, holds prapatti as accomplished entirely through Sri and Vishnu's own grace with no effort required of the soul at all, illustrated by the marjara nyaya, the logic of the cat, whose kitten is carried passively in its mother's mouth. Bound up with this same disagreement is the further question, unresolved between the schools, of whether Sri is herself divine in the same sense Vishnu is or a soul of an exceptionally exalted kind, since the two positions imply different accounts of how her mediation could work without either compromising Vishnu's supremacy or reducing her intercession to a merely symbolic role.