[Advaita-l] Apaurusheyatva of Vedas.

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2011, kuntimaddi sadananda wrote:

> Shabda is purely faith as far as the listener is concerned.

A pramana by definition is fact and does not depend on faith for validity. 
But yes whether it is accepted in the first place is not set in stone. 
But this is not exclusively a problem that only shabda faces.  There are 
people who think the earth is flat, the moon landings were a hoax etc.

> From the 
> point of the teacher, the prameya that is being communicated could 
> depend on other pramANas including sabda depending on the nature of that 
> knowledge he is communicating using the shabda. That is not part of the 
> shabda pramANa analysis. Thus how the reporter found of the fact is 
> still a faith on the part of the listener who is gaining the knowledge 
> of the prameyam from shabda pramANa that is by listening to the 
> reporter. In the court of it is called hearsay evidence- not valid as 
> direct proof of the fact.  

No if we follow the court analogy, it is like the testimony of an "expert 
witness" whose findings are treated by the court as fact even if the judge 
doesn't have the technical expertise to verify for himself.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>