Vedas under the strict tutelage of his father. When Krishnamacharya was ten, his father died. Some years later, when he was about twelve, he went to Mysore, then the largest city in Karnataka, where his great-grandfather, Srinivasa Brahmatantra Parakala Swami, was the head of the Parakala Math, to continue his studies there and at Mysore University, under his great-grandfather's guidance. Education Krishnamacharya spent much of his youth traveling through India studying the six darśana or Indian philosophies: vaiśeṣika, nyāya, sāṃkhya, yoga, mīmāṃsā and vedānta. In 1906, at the age of eighteen, Krishnamacharya left Mysore to attend university at Banaras, also known as Vārānasī, a city of hundreds of temples and a highly regarded North Indian center of traditional learning. While at university, he studied logic and Sanskrit, working with Brahmashri Shivakumar Shastry, "one of the greatest grammarians of the age". He also learned the Mimamsa from Brahmasri Trilinga Rama Shastri. In 1914, he once again left for Banaras to attend classes at Queens College, where he eventually earned a number of teaching certificates. During the first year he had little or no financial support from his family. In order to eat, he followed the rules that were laid down for religious beggars: he was to approach only seven households each day and offer a prayer "in return for wheat flour to mix with water for cakes". Krishnamacharya eventually left Queens College to study the ṣaḍdarśana (six darshanas) in Vedic philosophy at Patna University, in Bihar, a state in eastern India. He received a scholarship to study Ayurveda under Vaidya Krishnakumar of Bengal. Krishnamacharya claimed that he was invited to the coronation of the Rajah of Dikkanghat (a principality within Darbhanga), at which he defeated a scholar called Bihari Lal in a debate, and received rewards and honors from the Rajah. He stated that his stay in Banaras lasted 11 years. He further claimed that he studied with the yoga master Sri Babu Bhagavan Das and passed the Samkhya Yoga Examination of Patna, and that many of his instructors recognized his outstanding abilities in yoga, some asking that he teach their children. The tale of Ramamohana Brahmachari and the Yoga Korunta Krishnamacharya told his pupils, including Iyengar, "an imagined history, it turns out, of thousands of asanas". Mark Singleton and Tara Fraser note that he provided contradictory descriptions of the facts of his own life, sometimes denying tales he had told