[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

The whole problem comes because we assume that rishis are historical personalities and the mantra revealed by them did not exist before their time. This is not the Mimamsa position as far as I understand their terse logic. According to their logic, the mantras are eternal and passed down through oral tradition. The names of rishis mentioned are common nouns. The historical persons are proper nouns and they get the name because of interpreting them. 

I will leave it to Sri Vidyasankar as he  seems to think that the mantras were unknown before the rishis revealed them. 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Bhaskar YR <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 14:25:11 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
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	<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

sAshtAnga praNAms Sri Vidya prabhuji
Hare Krishna

Thanks for suggesting those two books.  I shall try to obtain it this week 
end.  If you could permit me, I want to share my thoughts as below :

The fundamental position with respect to the Rshi-s is that although they 
have
their names associated with specific mantra-s, they did not personally 
author
those mantra-s. 

>  Then I am not able to understand why we say rishi, devata, chandas to 
each and every maNtra!!??.  Since traditionally we assign a particular 
maNtra to the particular Rishi one would get the impression that though 
for the 'vidya' (brahma vidya) there is no author, the words & sentences 
(which are chandObaddha & have more details with regard to 
socio-biological details of 'veda-kAla) which are conveying the detailed 
description of that 'vidya' & other apara vidyA (with various material 
details) should have been originated from that particular Rishi's 
intellect.  Hence, we see the somany minute details of other things in 
brAhmaNa bhAga (right from samit pramANa to the qualities of yagna 
adhvaryu).  And saMhita & AraNyaka also not an exception to this type of 
loukika material details. 


Although yAjnavalkya and janaka, uddAlaka and Svetaketu talk about 
brahmavidyA in the upanishad-s, they are not  the authors of this vidyA. 

>  Yes, but as you know, veda in general & vedAnta in particular not only 
restricted to bhUma vidyA, there are plenty of stories, incidents, 
dialogues, interrogative questions meticulously narrated in veda-s.  For 
example, in katOpanishat,  before yama teaching the secret of mrutyu 
(which is vidyA) there is an elaborated narration of filmy like story, 
like nachiketa's father's yajna, his dAna, nachiketa-s question to his 
father, father's frustrated answer, nachiketa's travel to mrutyu lOka, 
yama's offer to nachiketa, nAchiketAgni, first two demands of nachiketa 
etc. etc.  All these details would show us that there must be an author 
who saw/heard these incidents and penned it with the background of then 
existing socio-biological environment. 

In other words, brahmavidyA is not a figment of the imaginations of people 
named in the upanishat texts

>  I agree prabhuji, but the words/sentences that denotes the vidya 
directly or indirectly might have been originated from an intellectual 
human/divine brain which has been influenced by the 'data' & geographical 
details then existing!!  I dont think this possibility can not be ruled 
out so easily. 

Your humble servant
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar
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