[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> >
> > 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.
>
> Unknown to whom? They were certainly known to whoever/whatever revealed
> them
> to the Rshi who then passed it on to us.
>
> You seem to be misrepresenting my position. To say that a Rshi lived in
> time and that
> he or she revealed some portion of the veda to mankind does not imply the
> prior non-
> existence of what was revealed. I've never implied anything of the sort,
> even remotely.
> In fact, as a vedAntin, I don't accept prAg-abhAva. As a scientist, I
> don't accept that
> something can come out of nothing. I should have thought that this is
> obvious to all.
>
> RV: In my understanding, your position is that the rishis were historical
> persons and revealed the mantras at t = t1, t = t2 etc. Before that the
> Vedas were in manifest / unmanifest form co-existent with Ishwara. In your
> position, some injunctions will be unknown to mankind at the time between
> t1 and t2. So, such injunctions cannot operate in that time (as per the
> razor sharp argument put forward by sringeri acharya). As per my
> understanding, the sabda is eternal. It manifested in Brahma's heart at t =
> t0 (like he got pratyaksha etc.) exactly as it was done in the previous
> cycle. This contained the names of all the rishis and the mantras
> attributed to them. This was passed on to the followers of pravrtti and
> nivrtti margas. We think that the rishis appeared in history based
> on incorrect anumana as we cannot tell the time period of the rishis who
> revealed veda mantras. The actual persons fulfilled the prophecy of the
> Vedas by appearing and revealing what was already known.


In Adhyatma Ramayana, if I remember right, Sita asks, "Hey Rama! Have you
heard in any Ramayana that Rama left Sita behind in Ayodhya? You cannot do
something that has not been told already."