[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[Omkar Deshpande]

Dear Sri Rajaram,

>RV: But mimamsakas and vedantins tried to provide logical arguments in >favour of apaureshyatva. They did not ask us accept it on faith or as a >given. They tried to reason why Vedas are apaureshya. They don't tell us >why only sruti is apaureshya and not any sentence. Or I don't understand >their logic correctly. But there was definitely an effort to prove it.

I cannot speak for other schools, but your statements do apply to dvaita vedAnta. There is a work written by Sri Madhvacharya called Vishnu Tattva Vinirnaya (the mUla can be accessed from here: http://www.dvaita.net/prerelease.html). There is a significantly large section in it that tries to refute the stand of those who think the Vedas are pauruSheya (this includes the nAstikas as well as Naiyyayikas). The logic is used to refute pauruSheyatva, and it is claimed with the help of the doctrine of svataH-prAmANya that apauruSheyatva is "svataH eva siddham". 

mUla: apauruSheya-vAkya-a~NgIkAre na ki~nchita kalpyam | apauruSheyatvam cha svataH eva siddham |

A snippet from the Tika of Padmanabha Tirtha, one of the direct disciples of Sri Madhva: shashaviShANa-anupalambhena yathA shashasya viShANa-rahitatvam siddham eva, na kalpyam | evam vedasya apauruSheyatvam... siddham eva, na kalpyam ityarthaH | 

I am trying to get permission from the moderators of another forum called Vadavali to allow me to formally post a series on the whole apauruSheyatva-vAda from the Vishnu Tattva Vinirnaya, in the light of the Tikas, especially Sri Jayatirtha's Tika. If you or anyone else is interested, you could follow the series, if I do get permission to post it there. 

I should add a disclaimer here that at this stage, I am personally sceptical that apauruSheyatva can be proven, in the light of modern epistemologies of the sort used by historians or scientists. But it does appear to me that dvaitins believed that earlier, and the ones I know continue to believe today that apauruSheyatva is as much a certain fact as the sun rising in the sky, or hares not having horns, and requires as much (or as little) faith as that. 

Regards,

Omkar