Brahmana (fwd)

[Giri]

Somehow this e-mail never appeared on the list. i am sorry if you
have already received them.

On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:

> Secondly, the vajrasuchi "upanishad" is probably a late forgery.

        Naturally then, you assume muktika upanishhad is also a forgery
since it mentions vajrasuchi as a genuine upanishhad. On the other hand,
has some vedantic authority said that vajrasuchi and muktika are fakes ?
Shankara quotes from upanishhads which are no longer extant today.
Further, he even notes certain verses in the adhyatma patala of the
apastamba dharma sutra are upanishhadic in origin but have been lost by
his time. Thus, there has been a gradual erosion of upanishhadic verses.
Compounding this problem is the modern forgeries. Given this case, we are
provided to rely on the 108 upanishhads provided by muktika or else throw
out almost all upanishhads and just stick with the major upanishhads
which have been used by Shankara etc.

> Do you neccessarily lose your caste by leaving Bharata? Even today there

        i don't know; such information should be available in the dharma
sastras. Some members of this list may also have access to such
information. As someone on this list correctly pointed out, apastamba
sutra allows a person (not sanyas) to eat beef. In any case, an immigrant
from Bharat born to brahmana parents is no worse than a person who was
born to brahmana parents in the west for the purposes of adhikara.

> The crossing of the ocean makes one ashuddha but as the saying goes for
> every paapa there's a prayaschita.

        Do you know what the prayaschita is for a person who takes sanyas,
returns to married life and has children ? If he and his wife are
Brahmanas, the children are NOT brahmanas by default. Apparently,
Maharastrians during the time of Jnanadeva did not know an appropriate
prayaschita for this and recommended suicide of his parents for a start,
as you know.

Namaste.