Sureshvara and Mandana Mishra

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Tue, 13 Jan 1998, Shrisha Rao wrote:

> Actually, all scholars are grammarians, no matter what school they
> belong to.  They have to be, otherwise their statements, in favor of
> whatever school, would be ungrammatical.  Thus we have Patanjali's
> bhAshhya on the Panini-sUTra-s, AmarasimhA's koshA, etc., considered
> authOritative by Vedantins, although their rEspective doctrines (YogA
> and Jaina) are not similarly regarded.
>

Well, Vidyashankar has answered this well for me.  It is Grammarian in the
sense of sphotavadi that I meant.  Writting grammatical Sanskrit no more
makes you a Sphotavadi than reading the Advaita list makes you an Advaitin
:-)

> What is pertinEnt here is the fact that while Vedantins do study
> mImAmSA, the reverse is not true.  This distinction is perhaps
> hypothEtical given that there are no pure-blooded mImAmsaka-s any
> more, but if one were to exist, then he would not study Vedanta.  As
> such, the fact that a given scholar has read or written on both
> mImAmsA and Vedanta is indicative of the fact that he is a Vedantin,
> not that he is a mImAmsaka.  One is not aware of any counter-example
> to this rule.
>

Certainly the Bhattas and Prabhakars do not seem to.  (Though
interestingly I have read that Parthasarthi Mishra the commentator on
Prabhakar Mishra's Brhati took sannyas under the name Amalanand and
commmentated on Vachaspati Mishras Bhamati.)  However in Sureshwaracharyas
Sambandha Vartika there are many descriptions of other Mimamsaka views
some of which overlap with Vedanta.  For example, jnanakarmasamuccayavada
was a view of Mimamsakas as well as Vedantins.  Unlike the "orthodox"
Mimamsakas who thought the Upanishads were all arthavada, these people
believed that meditation was a type of action to be performed alongside
the other vidhis.

 > I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but the issue is
the > divergence of views between Sureshvara and Mandana Mishra;
> Prakashananda's status in the Advaitic tradition, his "discovery,"
> etc., don't really count either way in the main issue.
>

Ok, sorry I thought you were basing your thesis on Prakashananda's views.

--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>