[Advaita-l] Discussion on"Drg drsya viveka" and "vakyas-sudha"

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>Dear ssri Vidyasankara sundareshan,
>The point I was making was,though Bharati Tirtha(or combined Bharathi
>tirtha and vidyaranya) might have written the treatise(Drg drsya viveka,it
>is mentioned that Brahmananda Bharati wrote a commentary(I repeat
>commentary) on Drg drsya viveka.One is a treatise  and the other is a
>commentary on the treatise.There is definitely a difference between a
>treatise and a commentary.It is also probable that a treatise followed by
>a commentary as in the present case "drg drsya viveka"written by one
>person, and its commentary"vakya-sudha" written by another person goes by
>the same name(and at some times by alternate names.Such method is common

Dear Sri Srikanta,

Indeed, I do not doubt that at all, and this idea might well explain why two
names have been given for one text.

However, it does not follow from this that Sankara bhagavatpAda wrote a text
called vAkyasudhA. It also does not make it probable that the verse "asti
bhAti priyaM ..." was originally written by Sankara bhagavatpAda. One needs
independent manuscript evidence to say that. That is the point I was making.

The reason I emphasize this apparently minor point is that we need to weight
textual evidence very carefully. Somehow, as a culture, we seem to have lost
this ability. If we go back to Sankara bhagavatpAda's own works, it is very
clear how much of careful attention he pays to almost every word in the source
texts that he cites.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar

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