Iyengars (also spelt Ayyangar, Aiyengar or Aiyangar) are an ethnoreligious community of Tamil-speaking Hindu Brahmins. Members of the community follow Sri Vaishnavism and adhere to the Visishtadvaita school of philosophy propounded by the acharya Ramanuja. The community is regarded as part of the Pancha Dravida Brahmana classification of Brahmins in India.
The Iyengar community is principally distributed across the Southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. As followers of Sri Vaishnavism, Iyengars venerate Vishnu, along with his consort Lakshmi, as the supreme deity, and accord great importance to the devotional hymns of the Alvars compiled in the Naalayira Divya Prabandham, alongside the Sanskrit Vedas.
The community is traditionally divided into two denominations, the Vadakalai and the Tenkalai. The two sub-traditions differ on certain matters of doctrine, ritual practice and the relative emphasis placed on Sanskrit and Tamil scriptural sources within the Sri Vaishnava canon. Despite these differences, both denominations share a common allegiance to the teachings of Ramanuja and to the broader Sri Vaishnava tradition.
Adapted from the English Wikipedia article on Iyengar.