DhIkshidhar at kudanthai

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at BRAINCELLS.COM> wrote:

> > Sorry for sounding rude, but frankly, this seems like a cooked up
> > story to me. Appayya displays deep animosity towards the dvaita
> > doctrines at various places and has even written a text called
> > madhvatantramukhamardanam.
>
> Whoa hold on a minute.  While he may not have approved of their
doctrines,
> there is no reason to believe Shri Dikshita showed such animosity to
> the people themselves.

Right, what I obviously meant was that if Appayya really got defeated
in a debate and was "advised" to "continue" in advaita (sic), his
display of such vigorous animosity would have made him a fraud of the
1st order. Not to mention the complete conviction about advaitic
doctrines he displays in his books. Don't you think the entire story
makes Appayya into a big fool and in fact a complete cheat? I am sure
it wasn't the way Dr Marur interpreted the story, but behind the
veneer of "dvaita-advaita friendliness", the story is *extremely*
insulting to Appayya. Sri Sannidhanam's favorite writers are kAlidAsa,
sha.nkara and appayya, so appayya is really up there. IMHO (my opinion
only) we should be careful in relating stories about such great
personages and see whether it actually insults them or praises them.
Getting influenced by false notions of  "friendliness" at the expense
of relating stories which subtly insult (and that's an
understatement!) our AchAryas is
unnecessary.

> > All these hagiographic tales are not of
> > any use.
>
> I think it is significant that a latter day biographer thought to
write
> this even if it isn't completely historically accurate.

Certainly, its the wishful thinking of some character  that the great
appayya should have been defeated by some guru he owed allegiance to.
There are many such hagiographies, not just relating to advaita-dvaita
interactions, some written in this very century.

>'m inclined to trust it but a famous
> scholar like Appaya Dikshita must have taken part in many debates.
Surely

That doesn't mean he argued with VijayIndra surely. B.N.K Sharma
himself has said there are no authentic biographies of VijayIndra.
Neither do the traditional biographies and familial accounts of
appayyas descendants record any such argument.  There are many
lineages from appayya surviving to this day. As for Ramesan's book it
is certainly a nice compilation, but I just mentioned a few problems I
saw with the book.

> opponents did not always come to him.  And he was a royal minister
was he
> not?  That must have involved travelling too.

In any case, Adayapalam is near Kanchipuram, which is quite near
Madras actually. The MarundIshvarar temple is on the outskirts of
Madras and as I mentioned it has a statue of appayya and the temple
tradition is that he visited there. I got a mail from Ganesh that the
local tradition is that he worshipped in 3 temples in Madras. I shall
request my father to ask the Marundishvarar temple folks about their
aitihyam. My family lives very near the temple.

Rama