Creation theories

[Anand Hudli]

      Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Dennis Waite wrote:
>
> > 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.


  One usually comes across polemic and explantory books on advaita. Books
  of the former type are harder to understand and involve refutation of
  other schools and defense of advaita against objections of schools.
  Sriharsha's khaNdanaKhaNDakhaadya and chitsukhi belong to this type.
  The explanatory treatises are more suitable if one is looking for a
  good introduction to advaita. Some of the best known works are Shankara's
  vivekachuuDaamaNi and the upadeshasaahasrii, and VidyaaraNya's
  Panchadashii. There are also other minor works attributed to Shankara,
  such as Atmabodha, aparokshhaanubhuuti, and mahaavaakyadarpaNa.


>
> S. Vidyasankar
>
>

 Anand