Importance of Puranas in the Advaita tradition

[Ashish Chandra]

>From: "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar at braincells.com>
>Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000 02:08:37 -0500
>
>
>By coincidence a follower of the Hare Krishnas emailed
>webmaster at advaita-vedanta.org making many of those types of arguments.  If
>he agrees, I'll post his message and my reply.
>

Please do post these. I hope he agrees.

>On the subject of the Padma Purana, we have to be careful because the
>Puranas are part of an oral tradition and are not 100% fixed.  However in
>this case it is more obvious that there has been tampering because there
>are several different recensions of the Padmapurana and only the one
>prevalent in Bengal (which surprise, surprise is the homeland of the
>Gaudiya tradition) has this damning evidence against Advaita.  Given the
>number of opponents there have been of the "mayavada" why has noone else
>noticed this smoking gun?
>

The same objection can come from (if it is not already there) about the
depiction of Bhagawan Vishnu in our Puranas as having incarnated as Buddha
to teach a false doctrine to the Asuras. I am not sure but I recall reading
somewhere (?) that Balaraama was an incarnation of Vishnu and that there
might have been a switch between Buddha and Balaraama at a later date. This
might be just some article I have read and if any members know of anything
similar, please post. But then some other Puranas describe him as an avataar
of Shesh Naag.

>
>That the Puranas are authentic or not is not the issue but whether they
>should be considered authoritative.
>

True. But witness the mention of Mohammed in Bhavishya Puran[1] and then
there is the mention of viktAvati (Queen Victoria)! I guess my question
would be if there is any "authentic set" of the eighteen puraanas that few
would have a problem accepting. The BORI version of Mahaabhaarat is probably
considered very authentic. Is there a similar "set" of Puraanas. Even if
this be of little consequence to the Advaita tradition, at least such a set
would prevent people from believing in things like Allopanishad and Yesu
Upanishad, which would incidentally be considered Sruti.

1. http://www.islam-mauritius.org/hindunislam.htm

ashish
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