The story

Ku:re:sa — Sri: Kurattalvan — was born into wealth at Kuram near Kanchipuram. He left it at Sri: Ramanujacharya's side with nothing but a pair of cloths and the posture of a servant. The Govindacharya biography records that when he first came to the acharya's door, he had walked from his ancestral home carrying only his wife, A:nda:li Amma, and the Lord's name.

The central scholarly episode is the journey to Sa:rada:-pi:tha in Kashmir. Sri: Yamunacharya's third vow had charged Ramanuja with a Brahma Sutra commentary in the Bo:dha:yana-vriththi tradition. The only surviving copy of Bodhayana's Vriththi lay in the Sharada library. Sri: Ramanujacharya and Sri: Kuresha journeyed there, consulted the text, and — when the custodians refused to permit further reading — Kuresha, blessed with total recall, preserved the needful passages in his memory. On the return south, he wrote down at Ramanuja's dictation what the world now holds as the Sri: Bha:shya. This labor is commemorated separately in the naama sri:bha:shya:dimaha:granthaka:raka (#63).

Then came the Chola persecution. Tradition names the Chola king as Krimikantha, "worm-necked" — a title the Ashtottara itself preserves in the naama krimikanthanripadhvamsine (#84). Summoned to the court, Ramanuja was spirited away northward to Melkote in the disguise of a pilgrim; Kuresha, donning his acharya's ochre, went in his place. Asked to sign a declaration that "Siva is the supreme," Kuresha wrote instead, in the margin, dhronam asti — thandulo na:sthi ("the measuring-pot exists, but the rice does not"), meaning: Siva is a great deity, but not the Supreme. He lost his eyes for that sentence.

Blinded, exiled, and later restored through the intercession of Sri: Ranganatha at Tirumala, Sri: Kuresha never once spoke a word against the king. The naama pavithri:kruthaku:re:sa:ya — "he who sanctified Kuresha" — does not read, in the tradition, as Ramanuja conferring purity on a lesser man. It reads as the acharya receiving into himself the purity that Kuresha's sharanagati manifested.

Contemplation

An acharya is known by his disciples, and Sri: Ramanujacharya's stature is measured, in part, by the stature of Sri: Kurattalvan. A man who gave his eyes rather than utter one false word about Sri:man Na:ra:yana is the kind of devotee a true guru attracts. The contemplation for the devotee is that sishya-bha:va — the discipleship posture — is itself sanctifying. Offer the 108-chant of this naama for those you love who are undergoing trial for truth's sake, and for the strength to stand with an acharya when the cost of standing is great.