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Appayya Dikshita

Appayya Dikshita

1520 CE1593 CE · Adayapalam (Aḍaiyappalam), near Arani, Tamil Nadu

c. 1520–1593 CE (commonly cited dates; reasonably well attested for a 16th-century figure).

Appayya Dīkṣita was a 16th-century south Indian Sanskrit scholar and theologian, one of the most prolific and wide-ranging authors of the early modern period. A Smārta Brahmin of the Tamil country, he was a master of many disciplines — Vedānta, the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools of philosophy, Sanskrit poetics (alaṃkāra), and grammar. Although a committed Advaitin (non-dualist) in Vedānta, he was also a devotee and learned defender of Śiva, and he wrote works that engaged and contested the rival Vaiṣṇava theology of Madhva's school. His large and varied output — traditionally numbered at 104 works, including the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, Kuvalayānanda, and Parimala — made him a towering figure in later Sanskrit intellectual life. He is usually dated c. 1520–1593 and was patronized by south Indian rulers of his day.

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Adayapalam (Aḍaiyappalam), near Arani, Tamil Nadu

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About Adayapalam (Aḍaiyappalam), near Arani, Tamil Nadu

Adayapalam (Aḍaiyappalam) is a village near Arani, in the Tiruvannamalai district of northern Tamil Nadu, south India. It is the birthplace of Appayya Dīkṣita (16th c.), the prolific Advaita and Śiva-Advaita scholar.

See other sages who lived in Adayapalam (Aḍaiyappalam), near Arani, Tamil Nadu

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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Appayya Dikshita’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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