All of the stories about Ramananda,
however, point to someone who was
firm in his commitment to devotion and
was willing to initiate people from all
walks of society.
The tutelary deityfor the Ramanandi
ascetics is Rama, particularly as described
in the Ramcharitmanas, a vernacular ver-
sion of the epic Ramayanawritten by
the poet-saint Tulsidas (1532–1623?).
Tulsidas portrays Rama as God incar-
nate, come to earthfor the benefit of his
devotees, and the text’s primary theme
is on the power of devotion. Yet within
the larger confines of the Ramanandi
fold there are several distinct variations
on practice, which have little or nothing
in common with one another. One
strand is that of the tyagis, who stress
renunciation and asceticism. A second
strand is that of the Nagas, who in earli-
er times were fighting ascetics but
whose military organization is now
important only during the bathing
(snana) processions for the Kumbha
Mela. The final strand is that of the
rasiks (“aesthetes”), whose religious
practice is based on highly complex
patterns of visualization in which they
imagine themselves as present in the
court of Rama itself; this sort of visual-
ization was undoubtedly imitated
from the patterns of Krishnadevotion
as practiced in the Brajregion. The
rasik tradition is by far the most liter-
ate and sophisticated; the tyagis and
the Nagas perform similar sorts of rites
as other ascetics, although their inter-
pretation and their chosen deity is
unique to their order. For further
information see Peter van der Veer,
Gods on Earth, 1988.
Ramanand Sagar
Director of the televised production of
the Ramayana, which was completed in
the late 1980s. The episodes were aired
each Sunday morning for about a year,
and were wildly successful despite prob-
lems with production quality. (Some of
these problems undoubtedly derived
from the difficulties of preserving the
immediacy of the oral experience of
traditional storytelling in the modern
medium of television.) In the mid-
1990s Sagar devoted his attention to
other mythological television serials,
with an extended series on the life of
the god Krishna.Ramanuja
(11th c.) Southern Indian philosopher
who was the greatest exponent of the
philosophical position known as
Vishishthadvaita(“qualified nondual-
ism”) Vedanta, and the most important
figure in the Shrivaishnavareligious
community. Ramanuja lived most of his
life at the temple-town of Shrirangam
in the state of Tamil Nadu, in service of
the temple’s resident deity, Ranganatha,
a form of Vishnu. Ramanuja was con-
vinced that Brahman, or Supreme
Reality, was a personal deity rather than
an impersonalabstract principle, and he
was also convinced that devotion
(bhakti) was the most important form of
religious practice. Vishishthadvaita
Vedanta, his philosophical position,
stressed both of these convictions.
According to Ramanuja, in his essential
nature God is completely transcendent
and free from imperfections. The world
develops from God through a process of
evolution, an idea adapted from the
Samkhyaphilosophical school. The
world is thus similar to God, since it
proceeds from him, but also different,
since matter is unconscious and
insentient. In the same way, human
beings are similar in nature to God,
because they have him as their source,
though unlike God they are subject to
ignorance and suffering. For Ramanuja
and his followers, God is not identical
to human selves or to the world, all of
which are perceived as having real and
independent existence. The differ-
ences in capacity between God and
human beings makes devotion the
most effective means to gain final lib-
eration (moksha) of the soul, a libera-
tion that is conceived of as eternal
communion with God. For furtherRamanand Sagar