[Advaita-l] Scholarly Article on Why Vedas are Valid

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

Namaste Rajaram,

Results of karma, other loka-s, etc are not "axiomatic truths". They are
known from the veda just as (say) the existence of a computer in front of
you is known to you through pratyakSha. I am sure you don't regard the
computer in front of you as an "axiomatic truth" :-)

As Sri Raghav has correctly explained, one does not really "establish" the
pramANatvam of the veda any more than one establishes that the eyes see or
the ears hear.

Many years ago, I had asked one of my AchArya-s "why should we accept the
veda as pramANa", to which first response was "why should we accept the eyes
as pramANa". Of course, we had a long and fruitful discussion after that on
the concepts of svataH prAmANyam and parataH aprAmANyam.

Some of these issues were discussed in other recent threads. It was also
pointed out that shraddhA is not a unique requirement for shabda alone.

Thanks




On 12 October 2011 21:41, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>wrote:

> I was perhaps not clear on what I wanted. It is easy - sort of of - to
> establish pratyaksha and anumana as pramanas.
>
> Now, there are unseen entities (devas, isvara, results of karma, other
> worlds etc.). The existence of these and theories about them are based on
> Vedas, which have been accepted as axiomatic truths.