[Advaita-l] Ardhajaratiyam

V Subrahmanian v.subrahmanian at gmail.com
Mon Oct 8 05:25:56 CDT 2012


The crucial sentence of the bhashya is now given in devanAgari:

....इति च विकारार्थे मयट्प्रवाहे सति आनन्दमय एव अकस्मात् अर्धजरतीयन्यायेन
कथमिव मयटः प्राचुर्यार्थत्वं ब्रह्मविषयत्वम् चाश्रीयत इति ।


On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 3:49 PM, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> In the Brahmasutra bhashya 1.1.6..19 (अस्मिन्नस्य तद्योगं शास्ति)  we have
> the vAkyam:
> idaM tviha vaktavyam - 'sa vA eSha
> puruSho'nnarasamayaH.....prANamayaH...manomayaH...vijnAnamayaH....(tai.up.
> 2.1,2,3,4) iti ca vikaaraarthe mayaTpravaahe sati, Anandamaya eva akasmAt
> *ardhajaratIyanyaayena* kathamiva mayaTaH prAchuryArthatvaM
> brahmaviShayatvaM cha AshrIyata iti.
>
> Here Shankara is pointing out that while the Taittiriya upanishad, in the
> four sections says: annamayaH, prANamayaH, manomayaH, vijnAnamayaH where
> the meaning taken / accepted for the suffix 'mayaT' is *vikArartha, that
> is, a transformation *(of anna, prANa, etc.), how is it admissible to
> suddenly change the meaning of the suffix 'mayaT' in the term 'AnandamayaH'
> to mean* prAchuryArtha,  abundance* (of Ananda)?  Such an admission would
> amount to something like 'fancying an old hag as having her one half
> young'.
>
> In other words, in a series of occurrences of the term 'mayaH' the
> vikArArtha is admitted and at the end of the series the last occurrence of
> the term 'mayaH' is treated as being in 'prAchuryArtha'.  This
> inconsistency is what is called by that nyAyaH.
>
> The idea is: an old woman cannot be taken as being young in part.  We
> cannot refer to an old woman as  'she is only half old'.    This is called
> 'ardhajaratIyanyAyaH'.
>
> If you can pl. provide the Brihadaranyaka bhashyam reference, maybe we can
> give an explanation of that nyaya used there.
>
> Regards,
> subrahmanian.v
>
>
>


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