[Advaita-l] Anantaa vai vedaah

[sriram]

Dear
I think you meant katrathu kaimannalavu,kallalathu ulagalavu.[What is learnt 
is just a fistful of earth what is not learnt is a 
mountain.]R.Krishnamoorthy.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan" <rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com>
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" 
<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2011 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Anantaa vai vedaah


> On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Raghav Kumar <raghavkumar00 at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>> Namaste Siva Senani garu, Shri Lalitaalaalita ji and all other friends
>>
>> Thank you for your very meticulous effort in giving us these valuable
>> quotations from the mUlaM and the two bhAShyam-s.
>>
>> The question was - is "anantA vai vedAH" (taittiriya brAhmaNam 3rd 
>> aShTakaM)
>> only a gunArthavAda or can it be taken literally. I know full well the
>> limitation of intellect in arriving at a final conclusion. But in favor 
>> of
>> "Vedas are infinite", the following points come up
>>
>
> That's an interesting question.
>
> The arthavAda is the praise that the knowledge of the sAvitracayanam
> is equal to the knowledge of all the vedas, the arthavaada is not on
> the "anantaa.h" characteristic of the vedas. The text says
> "avi~jnaataan **iva* darshayaan cakaara". The parable is that the
> mountain was so big and at such a distance, that it's size could not
> be comprehended by the human intellect, although not "infinite" in the
> mathematical sense of the word. Bhaaradvaaja with 75 years of study (3
> lifetimes, 1 lifetime = 25 years) in comparison had mastered portions
> in comparison to the large mountain, was 3 small lumps of mud. So as a
> practical matter, the sentence can be taken literally.
>
> There is an parallel adage in Tamil "kaRRatu kallaLavu, kallaatatu
> malaiyaLavu", although not applied to the veda in particular.
>
> Rama
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