[Advaita-l] Re: Mathur Prakriya

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

sundararaman <sundararaman at eth.net> wrote:

>I find that that some correspondence is being exchanged on Mathur in 
>respect of Rudram etc.Vedam and Upanishads are different.Mathur people 
>agree that Sri Rudram is part of Vedam and is not a Upanishads.In fact 
>Advaithins also agree on this.Hence there should be no confusion on this.
>

That is correct. The textual divisions of what is samhitA and what is 
upaniShat are traditional.

>When U bring Mathur people into discussion please understand that the 
>prakriya of Mathur is slightly different.While they are also Advaithins 
>some of the Sankara Moola Bhashya in Gita as well as Brahma Suthra are 
>slightly changed (I can venture to say to suit them-while breaking a word 
>etc) and give a different meaning.The advaithins normally would hv left 
>this as a different prakriya but for the fact that the Sanyasin from H.pur 
>said that Vivekachoodamani was not written by Sri Adisankara and also used 
>some abusive language in respect of Sri Padmapada while discussing Moola 
>Vidyanirasa.This irked Advaithins and they retaliated by condemning the 
>Sanyasin particularly the sishyas of  Sringeri.I have visited mathur with 
>my Guru Sri R Krishnamurthy Sastrigal for a religious seminor and stayed 
>for a week when I picked up the above.The group will accept only Sankara 
>Moola Bhashya and further commentaries on Brahma Suthra like 
>Bhamathi,parimalam are not accepted by them.Anyway so m
>  uch about them.

Here, we must be careful about distinguishing between the root text and its 
interpretation. To my knowledge, the followers of Holenarsipur Swami have 
not changed the reading of the text of the bhAShyas. In fact, old-timers 
remember that through the recommendation of the Karavir math Sankaracharya, 
the Holenarsipur Swami studied the bhAShyas traditionally under Sringeri 
Sankaracharya and Sri Virupaksha Sastri, who also taught Swami 
Chandrasekhara Bharati of Sringeri. Where the Holenarsipur Swami mainly 
differs from the vivaraNa school is in splitting the term mithyAjnAna as 
mithyA + jnAna instead of mithyA + ajnAna. Granted that this is a major 
difference in interpretation, and that this has had major consequences for 
scholarly debate, but it does not amount to changing the Mula Bhashya 
itself. I have also seen a souvenir publication commemorating the 
Holenarsipur Swami, published in the 70s, which had a Srimukham from Swami 
Abhinava Vidyatirtha of Sringeri. So it is not correct to say that sishyas 
of Sringeri Math condemned the Holenarsipur Swami. I am also not sure if a 
term like Mathur Prakriya needs to be coined for their school, as every 
aspect of their interpretation is actually quite old and already present 
within the tradition.

>I found that an authentic version of Sankara Moola Bhashya has to be 
>brought out for posterity.In view of palm leave manuscript there are likely 
>to be copying mistakes which we can now correct.
>

Bringing out the text of the commentaries in modern form and formats 
(CD-ROMs, audio recordings, digitized text etc) is indeed a worthwhile 
project. Again, however, I must caution that these media are not free of 
errors either. Just as a human copyist can make mistakes when copying palm 
leaf manuscripts, and just as printed editions are prone to typographical 
errors (this has always been especially so with Indian publishers and 
increasingly so nowadays with Western publishers), errors can creep into 
electronic media too. Keeping this in mind, if a careful effort is done, the 
job can be accomplished.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar

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