[Advaita-l] mANDukya kArikA bhAShya

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

The main point which people cite against the authorship is the fact
that sha.nkara repeatedly "equates" the dream and waking state. Now,
in the brahma suutra bhaashya sha.nkara argues against that at one
place.

The point is that from the empirical stand point the dream and waking
are NOT equal. Dream gets sublated every day while waking gets
"sublated" only on realization. I use the term "sublated" in quotes
for the latter, since waking from a dream is only *analagous* to
realization and cannot be equated. The kaarikaa is usualluy talking
from the paaramaarthika view point, but when talking from the
vyavahaarika view point even it differentiates the waking and dream
states (see chapter 2).

Isayeva very perceptively points out that this is not an argument
against the authorship because sha.nkara *equates* dream and sleep in
the suutra bhaashhya also in other places. The same is the case with
the bR^ihadaraNyaka bhaashhya. Even in the kaarikaa bhaashhya
sha.nkara differentiates the waking and dream states from the
empirical view point. See chapter 2.

Most importantlly, from the usage of avidyaa and maayaa in the work,
it is highly unlikely that it was not written by sha.nkara. Only
suresvara and sankara consistently follow this usage in their works
(at least in most places!) as pointed out by Hacker. If indeed the
work is by someone else, the very foundation of Hackers criterion,
i.e., maaya is not the same as avidyaa would collapse!

There are some other minor points which people cite against authorship
- such as interpretatin of ceratin shruti passages, but I believe the
maayaa-avidyaa usage trumps all those also. I'll try to write a bigger
mail on this when I get the time.

Rama

On Thu, 3 Feb 2005 17:55:04 -0600, Ravisankar Mayavaram
<abhayambika at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can someone tell me what are the issues with this bhAShya and why some
> think this may not be by Sankara?
> 
> Thanks.