Dvaita and Sophistry - Part 3(Inherent natures of jivas)

[Shrisha Rao]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Vidyasankar wrote:

> 2. Note that there are various other places in the commentaries where
> Sankaracharya himself glosses the word AtmA as sharIra (body) or as manas
> (mind), depending on the source text he is explaining at that point. I can
> give a whole list from the sUtra, gItA and upanishad commentaries, if
> needed, but leave it to interested readers to check this for themselves.

This seems to be correct, and it also seems to have attracted a fair
amount of criticism from B.N.K. Sharma, who also charges, e.g., that
Sankara explains `agra' in `brahma vA idamagra AsIt.h' (BU 1.4.10) in a
manner that is "inconsistent with his own explanation of the same word in
similar contexts such as `naiveha kiJNcha agra AsIt.h' (BU 1.2.1) and
`AtmA vA idamagra AsIt.h' (AA 2.4.1)."  Don't mean to get a rise out of
people, but I wondered if there was a classical explanation (one clearly
stated by a sub-commentator) for this.

Likewise for why Sri Sankara explains `deva' and `asura' in the
udgItha-brAhmaNa (BU 1.3.1-28) as referring to the sense-organs themselves
rather than to their presiding deities (though these deva-s are said to
have decided to perform a yaj~na to overcome the asura-s, and to have
spoken, which one does not see inert organs doing themselves).  In his BSB
2.4.14, he does seem to uphold and defend the notion of abhimAni-devata-s.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

> Vidyasankar