Vayu's unusual doctrinal elevation within Madhva's Dvaita school of Vedanta goes beyond simply being counted as the philosopher's own incarnation; within Dvaita theology proper, Vayu occupies a formal and structurally important position as the chief mediating figure between the individual soul and the supreme god Vishnu, understood as the most exalted among all liberated and unliberated beings apart from Vishnu himself, and as the being through whom devotion and grace most directly flow toward ordinary souls seeking release.
Madhva composed a hymn, the Vayu Stuti, dedicated specifically to praising Vayu in this exalted intercessory role, and Dvaita tradition holds that Vayu has taken three great incarnations at different points across cosmic history to assist Vishnu's devotees directly, as Hanuman in the Ramayana age, as Bhima in the age of the Mahabharata, and as Madhva himself in the current age, each incarnation serving as a devoted servant and helper of Vishnu or his devotees at a critical juncture. This threefold incarnation doctrine gives Vayu a continuous, active salvific role across the major eras of Hindu sacred history within specifically Dvaita theology that no other Vedanta school assigns him, and it reflects Dvaita's broader doctrinal emphasis on a strict, permanent hierarchy of being running from Vishnu at the summit down through Vayu as his foremost servant and intermediary, and then through further graded ranks of souls, a hierarchical structure that is one of the most distinctive and, among other Vedanta schools, most contested features of Madhva's dualist philosophy.