Somanātha refers to Vyāsatīrtha as the guru of Krishnadevaraya, the ruler of Vijayanagara (see Vyāsayogi-Caritam and Verghese, Religious Traditions at Vijayanagara, 8–9).

Canadian Indologist Ajay Rao (University of Toronto), who has researched this issue, claims that the sympathies of Krishnadevaraya were on the side of Śrī-Vaiṣṇavas. The king’s guru was Venkata Tatācārya, an adherent of the Śrī-Sampradāya (A. Rao, A New Perspective). Perhaps Vyāsatīrtha was one of the gurus of the monarch, but the final word still remained with Tatācārya. Somanātha himself was a disciple of Vyāsatīrtha.