VaishnavismVaishnavism (Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the sole supreme being leading all other Hindu deities, i.e. Mahavishnu. Its followers are called Vaishnavites or Vaishnavas (), and it includes sub-sects like Krishnaism and Ramaism, which consider Krishna and Rama as the supreme beings respectively. According to a 2010 estimate by Johnson and Grim, Vaishnavism is the largest Hindu sect, constituting about 641 million or 67.
HaridasaThe Haridasa Bhakti Sahitya devotional movement (sampradaya) originated in Karnataka, India, after Madhvacharya, and spread to eastern states such as Bengal and Assam of medieval India. Over a span of nearly six centuries, several saints and mystics helped shape the culture, philosophy and art of South India in general and Karnataka in particular by exerting considerable spiritual influence over the masses and kingdoms that ruled South India.
Narahari TirthaNarahari Tirtha ( 1243 - 1333) was a Dvaita philosopher, scholar, statesman and one of the disciples of Madhvacharya. He is considered to be the progenitor of the Haridasa movement along with Sripadaraja. Though only two of his scholarly works are extant, they are characterised by their verbosity and lack of digressions. A few songs of his survive under the pen name Raghukulatilaka. As a minister of considerable influence to the Eastern Ganga rulers and later as the pontiff of Madhvacharya mutt, Narahari converted the Simhachalam temple into an educational establishment of renown and a religious centre for Vaishnavism.
VyasatirthaVyāsatīrtha (. 1460 – 1539), also called Vyasaraja or Chandrikacharya, was a Hindu philosopher, scholar, polemicist, commentator and poet belonging to the Madhwacharya's Dvaita order of Vedanta. As the patron saint of the Vijayanagara Empire, Vyasatirtha was at the forefront of a golden age in Dvaita which saw new developments in dialectical thought, growth of the Haridasa literature under bards like Purandara Dasa and Kanaka Dasa and an amplified spread of Dvaita across the subcontinent.
