[Advaita-l] Did Sankara have non-brahmin disciples?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

I can appreciate your sentiments expressed below, but I would first distinguish between
those who study advaita vedAnta as an academic exercise and those who study advaita
vedAnta as a personal spiritual and religious pursuit. It is indeed possible for one person
to do both, but for most people, it is one or the other. Those who research and publish
need to treat the history, system and thought of advaita vedAnta as an object of study 
like any other, e.g. economics or sociology or anthropology or whatever else. Those who
want to evolve spiritually through their study of advaita vedAnta need to figure out how
to incorporate it into their daily lives as conditioned by the world they live and work in.
 
In that respect, I still maintain that it is an unanswerable question whether Sankara did
or did not have non-brAhmaNa disciples. We simply do not have the records to prove 
one way or the other. Given what we know of Indian social structure and history, it is
most likely that his disciples who wrote texts were born brAhmaNa. But it should not be
thought that Sankara was never a popular teacher. For instance, do we know whether
ten or fifty or hundred people in some village sat down to listen to a discourse on the
gItA given by Sankara? No, we don't. Conversely, would Sankara have excluded SUdra-s
from listening to one of his discourses on the gItA? For this hypothetical question, my
answer would be that he would not have prevented it, because he categorically affirms
that the itihAsa-purANa are meant for all four varNa-s. The further question then is, 
does listening to a discourse and being positively affected by it qualify as disciple-ship?
It depends on the situation and is primarily dicated by two individuals - the listener and
the one giving the discourse. In any case, becoming a disciple of a specific guru is not
a one-shot deal, except in the most exceptional case. The vast majority of students
need to go again and again to a guru.
 
As for the question, "are they allowed to learn?", why not look at the contemporary 
situation in a broader perspective? Swami Vivekananda and Swami Chinmayananda 
were both non-brAhmaNa by birth. This did not prevent society at large from giving
the Swami title to them and it did not prevent the most orthodox of the 20th century
Sankaracharya-s from acknowledging them and their institutions. Now, what were
the personal, social, religious and philosophical factors that allowed Narendra Dutta
to become Swami Vivekananda and Balakrishnan Menon to become a Swami
Chinmayananda? Why don't we look at these sorts of specific instances and draw our
lessons from them? And what is it that keeps the vast majority of Sharmas and
Tripathis and Iyers and Joshis from graduating to Swami status? I agree that history
may not be always indeterminate, but I believe recent history is easier to discern
and determine than a past that was already only a dim and distant memory to our
great-grandmothers.

Regards,
Vidyasankar

 
> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:21:31 +0100
> From: rajaramvenk at gmail.com
> To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> Subject: [Advaita-l] Did Sankara have non-brahmin disciples?
> 
> Vidyasankar, I have perhaps not clearly stated the relevance of the
> question. Anyone can read the text and even publish research thesis if they
> are sharp. Many scholars discuss advaita vedanta over a cup of tea or even a
> glass of wine in top notch universities. For such people, is this a positive
> mental impression of higher ideals or a sinful activity that will retard
> their progress in spiritual evolution? There are women, sudras and even
> mlechhas in movements such as Chinmaya, that learn advaitam. Many of them
> are even renowned teachers. Are they allowed to learn first of all? Even in
> sankara mutts, there are many devout kshatriyas and vaishyas who learn
> advaita vedanta from books and listening to lectures. For them, is it
> better to focus on their svadharma rather than try to learn the nature of
> reality? Are grahastha brahmanas allowed to learn and teach advaitam as they
> are not practising renounciation?
> 
> As a liberal, I would like to think that the modern day situation is not a
> degradation but every one can learn at least theory. I you dont know the
> theory, how will you ever progress towards practice with conviction? But
> instead of making convenient assumptions, I would like to know if Sankara
> did have non-brahmin and / or non-sannyasi disciples? I dont think history
> is indeterminate always. If we are lucky, we may be able conclude this
> through direct evidence from Sankara's writings, works of his direct
> disciples and sankara dig vijayas. If they are completely silent on this, we
> should be able to decide based on sastras whether vedanta is universally
> accessible.
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
> To: Advaita List <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 08:25:16 -0700
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Did Sankara have non-brahmin disciples?
> 
> 
> It never ceases to amaze me how much time and effort we seem to want to
> waste on hypothetical questions for which the answers have almost no data to
> support them. Yet, even when hard facts are placed in front of us, we refuse
> to accept them and we refuse to make the right conclusions. Is this a
> uniquely
> Indian malaise? I certainly don't see this sort of speculation being
> indulged in
> by people of any other nationality that I have come across.
> 
> When Sankara "must" have lived, what he "must" have said and when, whom
> he "must" have taken as disciples - all these sorts of issues seem to hold a
> lot
> more interest to us. We fail to pay attention to what he *did* write in his
> commentaries and whom he *did* teach, even though these can all be easily
> deduced from the texts that are available to us.
> 
> So, in response to "did Sankara have non-brahmin disciples?", the only
> possible
> answer is a counter-question, "if he did, how would we know?" Did any of his
> disciples who wrote texts tell us whether they were born brahmin or not? It
> is
> a reasonable assumption that they were, but would we know if they were not?
> Do we have any hard data that will allow us to make a conclusion one way or
> the other? The answer is a resounding NO. We can ask as many questions as
> we like, but the situation is that anything that passes as an answer is
> ultimately
> no better than wishful thinking.
> 
> Regards,
> Vidyasankar
> 
> > Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 21:37:40 +0100
> > From: rajaramvenk at gmail.com
> > To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> > Subject: [Advaita-l] Did Sankara have non-brahmin disciples?
> >
> > In his Gita commentary, Sankaracharya says that previous commentators have
> > commented on every sentence and word but the meaning is not clear to lay
> > people. And that he is writing this to make it clear and that this message
> > would spread. Did he teach advaita to non-brahmins and accept them as
> > disciples? In Manisha Panchakam, he accepts as guru a low born jnani but
> > dont know if scholars accept that this incident took place at all.
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