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

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> Dear Ramesh, I started this thread to know if there is a scholarly
> approach to establish Vedas as valid. The best argument I saw was Sri
> Vidyasankar's that it is axiomatic truth. Sri Ragahv's arguments help
> in expanding it. Of course, one could take a statement in the Vedas
> and say it is not true as per pratyaksha or anumana. We may need a
> case by case defence. 
 
I would request you to draw up the parameters with some more clarity
on the kind of defense that you wish to see. At a core philosophical level,
or at a religious level, asking a traditional scholar for a logical establishment
of the veda-s as pramANa is as unnecessary as asking a Rabbi to establish
the Torah logically or an Imam the Koran or the Pope the Christian Bible.

There are, of course, lots of other issues in the contemporary world, such
as those you pointed out in another mail on this thread, but I wonder if
these would not be better served through other approaches.
 
Finally, a clarification on my stance about the axiomatic status. I have never
intended that one should take each and every statement in the veda should
be understood literally as axiomatic truth. Rather, the validity of the veda as
a pramANa is what I describe as being axiomatic, within the two systems of
mImAMsA. I would hardly expect a naiyyAyika, of the old type or the navya
type, or the modern formal axiomatic logician, to accept the veda as axioms,
let alone expect anyone else outside the mImAMsA traditions to do so! 

Also, please note that in a number of places in the brahmasUtra commentary,
pratyaksha refers to the veda (as that which is grasped directly by the ear)
and anumAna correspondingly refers to the smRti corpus. This is just FYI,
to be noted as descriptive terms, not as pramANa vAda terminology.
 
Regards,
Vidyasankar
 
ps. Your argument in another post about the omnipotence of any God who
exists and is omniscient establishes omnipotence not as an axiom, but as a
corollary of existence and omniscience.