[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

Omkar Deshpande omkar.vallabh at gmail.com
Fri Jun 29 15:27:36 CDT 2012


Dear Sri Rajaram,

<<<He does give
arguments against paureshytvam because that was held by certain schools
including nyaya who thought Vedas were produced by god and others who
thought it was the opinion of rishis.>>>

Who were the philosophers that claimed the Vedas were the opinion of
Rishis? Are there references to such Purvapakshins in the Mimamsaka
works? Were any of them within the Vedic fold?

I know that the Buddhist Pali canon refers to the Rishis as composers
of the Vedas:
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.095x.than.html

But I'm curious to know if there were also Vedic philosophers with
such an opinion. One of the commentaries on the Vaisheshika Sutras
(6.1.1) refers to the Vedas as being composed by the Rishis who wanted
to communicate the truths they had seen (in some kind of spiritual
experience inaccessible to ordinary people) to those lacking that
experience:

pUrve khalu R^iShayaH sAkShAtkR^ita-dharmANaH babhUvuH | te cha
avarebhyaH asAkShatkR^ita-dharmabhyaH param shreyaH upadidishuH |
svayam hi j~nAtam artham parAn pratipAdayitukAmena shabdaH prayujyate
| (commentary on buddhi-pUrvA vAkya-kR^itiH vede: 6.1.1)

I noted these words when browsing the Digital Library of India website
where they have a text with three commentaries on the Vaisheshika
Sutras, one of which says this (and in the same section, it also
rejects the shabda nityatva of Mimamsakas and claims "na tu anAdiH
veda-rAshiH"). The other two commentators look at the Vedas as
authored by Ishvara. This particular commentator appears to differ
from them. I unfortunately do not remember the names of the three
commentators, but one can look them up on that site (I was searching
for Kanada Sutras when I came across that book),

Regards,

Omkar



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