[Advaita-l] Re: Advaita-l Digest, Vol 2, Issue 4

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>Jaimini 1.2.1: "The purpose of the Veda being
>injunction to action, those portions that do not serve
>that purpose (i.e. upanishhads) are useless, and these
>portions are non-eternal."
>
>J-K answer the above pUrvapaksha objection by saying
>that the upanishhads are arthavAda. Now, how would a
>VedAntin answer the objection?

Non-advaitins among vedAntin-s would have different ways of answering this. 
My guess would be that they would argue that the upanishad-s do contain 
injunctions to know brahman. The advaitin would go about it as follows.

First, injunction to action is not the only purpose of the Veda, the other 
purpose being to impart valid Self-knowledge. This is the "jnApaka" role of 
Sruti. Second, that the upanishad-s are not useless because they serve the 
above-stated second purpose. Therefore the pUrvapaksha claim of the 
non-apaurusheyatva of Sruti remains unproved.

The advaita vedAntin handling of the issue disagrees with both the 
pUrvapaksha and the siddhAnta of the pUrva mImAMsA sUtra and comes up with a 
different solution.

Vidyasankar

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