ABSTRACT
The theologian and scriptural exegete Ramanuja, who is believed to have lived during the period 1017 to 1137 in the Tamil Nadu region of south India, was a key figure in the formation of the Sri Vaisnava tradition of devotional monotheism that flourishes. The Sri Vaisnava religion, worshipping the deity named Visnu Narayana and his female partner or consort Sri, owes its ethos to the confluence of three streams. They thus offered paths to salvation through religious discipline and devotion to God for those who were excluded by accident of birth from participating in the mainstream traditionalist religion. Such a theology is concordant with the enthusiastic devotional religion of the Tamil Alvar poets. Being free from evil is of course an aspect of the divine perfection, the precise sense of which is that the godhead is free from karma; a mode of being that is the preserve of the Supreme Being and released souls.
