[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Namaste Venkataraghavanji,

Thank you for your mail. may I request you kindly to send me a photocopy of  T.K. Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper titled "BhAskara on the
Gita" presented at the GIta SamIkshA conference held in Tirupati on March, 1970.

Would you think that Abhinava Shankara, another very famous avatara of Adi Shankaracharya, could have written the Bhagavadgita bhashya, if and when all evidences confirm that  a fresh bhashya on the Bhagavadhita was needed to be written by Sri Vidyashankara to refute  Sri Ramabujacharya's Bhagavadgitabjashya, as one advaitic  bhashya was already therein Sri ramanujacharya's time. This will be satisfy the objection that language style of the Bhagavadgitabhshya was different for Adi Shankara's other bhashyas.

Tthe Bhagavadgitabhashya does not have 745 verses, even though the Gita press edition of the Mahabharata clearly shows that the Bhagavad Gita had 745 verses. One possibility is that Sri Vidyashankara had just to refute only the version with 700 verses on which Sri Ramanujacharya wrote his bhashya.  But if any one before Sri Ramanujacharya wrote the advaitic bhashya on the Bhagavadgita, then the question as to why the 45 verses were omitted still stands,

Regards,
Sunil KB

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 12/31/16, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara
 To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
 Date: Saturday, December 31, 2016, 10:06 AM
 
 Namaste,
 One thing we can use to determine objectively
 if Shankara bhagavatpAda
 wrote the gIta
 bhAshya, or if it was a later advaitin in his tradition,
 is
 to see if there is any evidence from
 other commentators that are
 chronologically
 proximate to him.
 
 It is
 widely accepted that BhAskara, a bhedAbhedavadin, who is
 said to have
 lived around c. 800 AD
 ("BhAskara the VedAntin", Daniel Ingalls), is a
 close contemporary of Shankaracharya. BhAskara
 quotes Shankara's brahma
 sUtra bhAshya
 quite extensively in his own bhAshya to this prasthAna.
 BhAskara, in turn, is quoted by VAcaspati
 Mishra in BhAmati. Therefore, he
 must have
 lived between Shankara's and VAcaspati's
 lifetimes.
 
 Now turning to
 the question if there are any references to Shankara's
 gIta
 bhAshya in any of BhAskara's works.
 Unfortunately, not too many surviving
 works
 of BhAskara are available to us. Thankfully, there are some
 fragments
 available from his gIta bhAshya (9
 chapters of his gIta bhAshya are
 published
 by the Benares Sanskrit University, edited by Dr.
 Subhadropadhyaya, 1964).
 
 In the few fragments of the BhAskara gIta
 bhAshya available today, there is
 one
 interesting comment he makes when commenting on sloka
 2.21:
 वेदाविनाशिनं
 नित्यं य एनमजमव्ययम्
 ।
 कथं स पुरुषः
 पार्थ कं घातयति हन्ति
 कम् ॥ २१ ॥
 
 These are Shankara's words in his
 commentary to the bhAshya: हेत्वर्थस्य
 च
 अविक्रियत्वस्य
 तुल्यत्वात् *विदुषः
 सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध एव
 प्रकारणार्थः
 अभिप्रेतो भगवता*
 ।
 
 Turning to BhAskara, he
 quotes Shankara in the bhAshya to the same verse:
 अत्र क्लेशभीरव:
 केचित् स्वमतं
 भगवत्यारोप्य
 वर्णयन्ति *विदुष:
 सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध
 एव
 प्रकरणार्थोSभिप्रेतो
 भगवता* इति.
 
 In commenting on this verse, BhAskara
 criticises Shankara's bhAshya by
 saying
 that Shankaracharya is simply attributing his own views onto
 Lord
 Krishna when he says "in this
 context, Krishna's view is that for the wise
 person total renunciation of karma is
 prescribed".
 
 Its quite
 clear here that BhAskara is quoting Shankara's gIta
 bhAshya
 verbatim. Given that BhAskara also
 quotes Shankara in his Brahma sUtra
 bhAshya,
 we can conclude that the Shankara that wrote the gIta
 bhAshya must
 have lived at the same time as
 the Shankara that wrote the brahma sUtra
 bhAshya. A reasonable simplification to make is
 that it is indeed the same
 person.
 
 (The above references to
 BhAskara's bhAshya and his quotation of
 Shankara's
 bhAshya are from T.K.
 Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper titled "BhAskara on
 the
 Gita" presented at the GIta
 SamIkshA conference held in Tirupati on March
 1970. The proceedings of the conference have
 been published by Sri
 Venkateswara
 University, Tirupati. It is available in electronic form
 at
 archive.org)
 
 Regards,
 Venkatraghavan
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