ಮಧ್ವ ನವಮಿ | Madhva Navami

Madhva Navami is the day on which Madhvacharya, the teacher of Dvaita Vedanta who established the worship of Krishna at Udupi, is held to have withdrawn from human sight. It falls on the navami, the ninth tithi, of the bright fortnight of Magha. Madhva mathas and households keep it wherever they are, and Udupi, where the event is placed, is its centre.

The account

The Madhva accounts place the event in the Anantheshwara temple at Udupi. Madhvacharya, then in his eightieth year, was teaching his disciples, and the account most often given says he was expounding his commentary on the Aitareya Upanishad. A shower of flowers fell on him, and when the disciples cleared the flowers away he was no longer there.

The tradition does not speak of a death. It holds that he went to Badari in the Himalaya, to be with Vedavyasa, and that he remains there. That is why the day is remembered as his entry into Badarikashrama rather than as a punyatithi.

Most accounts date his life from 1238 to 1317 and place this day in 1317. Some place his life about forty years earlier, from 1199 to 1278. Both datings are in print, and the observance does not depend on either.

Who he was

Madhvacharya was born at Pajaka, near Udupi, and named Vasudeva. He took sannyasa young, under Achyutapreksha, and was given the name Purnaprajna, and later Anandatirtha. He wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, setting out Dvaita, the teaching that the Lord, the souls and the world are real and distinct from one another. He installed the image of Krishna at Udupi and entrusted its worship to eight disciples, from whom the eight mathas of Udupi descend. His life is told in the Sumadhva Vijaya, a Sanskrit poem in sixteen cantos by Narayana Panditacharya, the son of his disciple Trivikrama Panditacharya.

How the day is kept

It is a day of worship of the acharya and of reading his life. At Udupi the Anantheshwara temple, where the event is placed, marks it with special worship and a car procession. In the mathas elsewhere the pattern is similar. The programme of Uttaradi Math at Bengaluru for the day in 2024 gives a fair idea of it: a group reading of the Sumadhva Vijaya in the morning, recitation of the Hari Vayu Stuti, a car festival before noon, and in the evening a discourse on the Sumadhva Vijaya.

Which day Anudina gives

Anudina gives the day on which the navami of Magha shukla paksha is running at sunrise. The bright fortnight has the same month name in the amanta and purnimanta calendars, so there is no difference of naming to allow for here. The row is shown when the Tradition setting is Madhva, in every regional custom; under Smarta or Sri Vaishnava it does not appear. In 2027 Anudina gives 15 February.

The day comes two days after Ratha Saptami and the day after Bhishma Ashtami, and Magha Purnima follows six days later. Madhvacharya’s birth is kept separately, on Vijayadashami: see Madhva Jayanti.