[Advaita-l] Shankara authenticates Shiva

S Jayanarayanan sjayana at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 17 14:27:20 CDT 2016


D Gayatri dgayatrinov10 at gmail.com wrote:
 
> > > > > But when did I ever say that mere worship of Vishnu without any jnana, leads to immortality?
> > > > 
> > > > When did I ever say that mere worship of Shiva without any jnana, leads to immortality? 
> > > 
> > > Err...chanting the rudram for instance...
>> > Revered Sir, how then do you interpret the following verse from the Jabala Upanishad?
> > (Which, one must add, is an Upanishad that is quoted by Sankara!).
>>> >   III-1. Then the disciple students (Brahmacharins of Yajnavalkya) asked him: ‘Pray, tell
> >   us, what is that mantra by reciting which one attains immortality?’ He replied: ‘By (reciting)
> >   Satarudriya’. These mantras are indeed the names of (Rudra to achieve) immortality. By
> >   (reciting) these (mantras) one becomes immortal.
>> >   atha hainaM brahmachAriNa UchuH ki.n japyenAmR^itatvaM brUhIti ||
> >   sa hovAcha yAj~navalkyaH | shatarudriyeNetyetAnyeva ha vA
> >   amR^itasya nAmAni ||
> >   etairha vA amR^ito bhavatIti evamevaitadyAj~navalkyaH || 3||
>  
> It is interesting to note that Shankara does not really quote this chanting
> rudram verse at all.
> 
 
Interesting that you chad oncluded in the original message on this thread that Sankara's *partial* quotes from the Mahabharata
implies that the *whole* section of the Mahabharata must be genuine and taken at face value!
 
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2016-August/041878.html
 
 "The first quotation of Shankara is from Mbh 12.338.1 in the critical edition. The complete verse is as follows"
 ...
 "Since Shankara quotes this incident from both these chapters (328 and 329 of Shanti parva), these incidents are
  not interpolations as they have been authenticated by the great Shankara himself"
 
As a matter of fact, Sankara quotes the Jabala Upanishad (JU) verses several times in his Brahma Sutra Bhashya (BSB):
 
 BSB 1.2.32: quoted JU verse 2
 BSB 2.1.3: quoted JU verse 5
 BSB 3.4.20: quoted JU verses 4 and 5
 
And the JU runs to only about a couple of pages, whereas the Mahabharata section on Purusha Suktam runs to more than three pages!
 
The point is - if you can extrapolate Sankara's PARTIAL quotes from the Mahabharata as proof of acceptance of the entire section of the text,
then one can equally well extrapolate Sankara's PARTIAL quotes from the Jabala Upanishad as proof of acceptance of the entire text of the JU!
 
Cheers,
Kartik
 


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