Creation theories

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Dennis Waite wrote:

> I have been studying Vidyasankar's excellent response to my query about
> creation. I have translated the Sanskrit bits as best as I could and
> reworked these complex ideas so that I felt I understood what was being
> said. Below is the result. I would ask Vidyasnakar to correct any
> misunderstandings and also give his permission for me to read the article to
> my students at the Advaita class, who have been asking about this recently

Gladly. If you find the material useful, please do not hesitate to make
use of it. I have also put a modified version of the post I sent to this
list at the advaita website, at
<http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~vidya/advaita/creation.html>.

> and to whom I have been unable to give a satisfactory explanation. Meanwhile
> I am now inspired to read the Mandukya references and Sankara's commentary
> more carefully. I had been aware of the discussion there but had abandoned
> it a year or two ago as being too difficult. Incidentally, are there any
> readily available (readable?) books by SrIharsha, citsukha or sukhaprakASa
> that you mentioned. I have not heard of these authors. Is there anything on
> the web relating to them? They sound interesting!

SrIharsha's khaNDana-khaNDa-khAdya has been published many times in the
Sanskrit original. I am not aware of translations. SrIharsha's
naishAda-kAvya, which is a poem on the Nala-Damayanti story, has been
published with translations, commentaries etc. citsukha has written a
commentary called abhiprAya-prakASikA, on maNDana miSra's brahmasiddhi,
the bhAva-tattva-prakASikA on sureSvara's naishkarmyasiddhi, and an
independent work called tattvapradIpikA, also known as citsukhI.
sukhaprakASa has commented on SrIharsha's khaNDana-khaNDA-khAdya, I think.
Usually, the publishers who publish such works are the Universities of
Madras and Mysore, Chowkhamba (Varanasi), Motilal Banarasidass (Delhi) and
Chetana (Bombay).

The general opinion about these works is that they are very difficult, and
are only read at a very advanced level. SrIharsha, especially, revels in
difficult language constructions, and himself says that his work is
difficult to understand without proper guidance from an expert guru. There
is a fairly decent account of the issues they handle in S. N. Dasgupta's
History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2.

S. Vidyasankar