[Advaita-l] shankara in bruhadAraNyaka on 'saNyAsa'

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Namaste,

When we talk about Janaka we should bear in mind that in the Bhagavad Gita (3.20) Lord Krishna said that through action alone Janaka did Siddhi-labh ie. achieved Perfection.  This, to my mind, means that Janaka had ended up doing only Niskaama Karma and thus he achieved Sannyasa without taking to Sannyasha. Does this not mean that despite being a Kshatriya nothing remained for Janaka to achieve?

Regards,

Sunl K. Bhattacharjya

--- On Thu, 10/8/09, Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com> wrote:

From: Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com>
Subject: [Advaita-l] shankara in bruhadAraNyaka on 'saNyAsa'
To: advaitin at yahoogroups.com, "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009, 1:14 AM

praNAms
Hare Krishna

First,  in geeta bhAshya (2-10),   shankara says : janakAdayaH 
tattvavidOpi....karmasaNyAse prAptepi karmaNA sahaiva saMsiddhiM AstithAH 
na karma saMnyAsaM krutavantaH...Here shankara clearly hints that even 
kshatriya-s like janaka etc. are eligible to take sarvakarma saNyAsa but 
continued with their previous karma etc.  And  in mundaka shruti ( 1.2.12) 
bhAshya on 'brAhmaNo nirvedamAyAt', shankara explicitly says that ONLY 
brahmaNa-s have the special eligibility (adhikAra)  to take saNyAsa : 
brAhmaNasyaiva visheshatOdhikAraH sarvatyAgena brahma vidAyAM iti 
brAhmaNagrahaNaM, here also one can infer that though brAhmaNa-s have 
special (vishesha)  adhikAra, other varNA-s (kshatriya & vysya)  also can 
take saNyAsa.  But in bruhadAraNyaka bhAshya, at two places shankara 
explicitly says ONLY brahmaNa-s have the adhikAra to take saNyAsa and 
kshatriya & vysya-s donot have adhikAra to take pArivrAjya saNyAsa.  Here 
are those two instances :

(a)  brahmaNAnAM eva adhikArO vyutthAne atO brahMaNa grahaNaM  (br.up. 
bhAshya 3-5-1).

(b)  na hi kshatriya vyshyayOH pArivrAjya pratipattirasti (concluding 
remarks at br.up. bhAshya 4-5-15)

I heard that sureshwara in his vArtika says all the three varNa-s have 
adhikAra to take saNyAsa. 

Kindly clarify how traditional vyAkhyAnakAra-s / AchArya-s would reconcile 
this seemingly contradictory statements??

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar 

PS :  My paramaguruji Sri SSS too has not discussed this issue in 
detail..He, in his Kannada commentary on bruhadAraNyaka, just points out 
at vArtika reference & leaves it to scholars to look at at.  Hence I am 
making this request. 
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