[Advaita-l] Fwd: Shankara authenticates Shiva as the son of Brahma

[V Subrahmanian]

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On Sat, Aug 13, 2016 at 10:59 PM, D Gayatri <dgayatrinov10 at gmail.com> wrote:

That is completely irrelevant. There are no invocations for BSB etc.


It is quite relevant. For the BSB, the invocation is in the very adhyāsa
bhāṣya itself, implicitly, to the pure consciousness as the commentators
have pointed out.  There are explicit invocations penned by Shankara at the
beginning of only certain upanishad bhāṣyas: kaṭha, taittiriya and mandukya
(both at the beginning and end). For Br.up. too there is an one-line
invocation.  These are available in all editions, including the
Sw.Gambhirananda translations.

For the Taittiriya invocation, Anandagiri points out: it is a prayer to the
tattvam, both in taṭastha and svarupa lakshanams. So too Anandagiri points
out in the mandukya, it is a prayer to the nirguna tattam. It is common
practice for both ancient and later advaitins to pray to the nirguna
tattvam. I have given instances for this in the Vachaspati misra Crime
article.

>
>
> On Saturday, 13 August 2016, V Subrahmanian via Advaita-l <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>> In the invocatory verse for the Taittiriya Upanishad bhashya, Shankara
>> pays
>> obeisance to no deity whatsoever but the Nirguna Tattvam:
>>
>> yasmājjātam jagat sarvam........tasmai jnānātmane namaḥ.
>>
>> So also at the beginning of the Mandukya bhashya, the prayer is to the
>> nirguna tattvam.
>>
>>