[Advaita-l] Sankhya and Yoga can give Moksha?

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

1)
Quote
I would like to ask you if you have seen the above text colophon in
an original manuscript or only in printed editions. What is said in a
printed edition is highly suspect. It does not necessarily reflect the
reality of the handwritten manuscripts.
Unquote

I have seen the printed version only and not the handwritten manuscript. It appears to me that Gopinath Kaviraj had not compared the printed book with the original manuscript himself ?  If he had done that  and if the ending lines were any different I guess he would have certainly made an issue of that.


2)

Quote
"Gopinath Kaviraj's publication ... argued forcefully that the author is the
same as the one who wrote a commentary on vAtsyAyana's kAmasUtra,
also called jayamangalA."
Unquote

It is perplexing how Gopinath Kaviraj could think of the "Jayamangala" commentary by Yashodhara (nowhere said to be a buddhist) on the Kamasurtra to be a Buddhist text while the popular  Buddhist "Jayamangala" gatha (extolling the virtues of Lord Buddha) has been ignored while arriving at the above conclusion.

3)
To my knowledge the Advaitins have not questioned the genuineness of the Gaudapadabhashya of the Sankhyakarika nor any advaitin scholar found anywhere any adverse comment on that Gaudapadabhashya by Adi Sankaracharya. Probably we can take it as "maunam sanmatilakshana". If the latter is the case then it appears to me that it may not be impossible that Adi Sankara could have  written the "Jayamangala" on Sankhyakarika. May be some scholar would like to compare the Gauadapadabhashya of Sankhyakarika with Jayamangala.

4)
Adi Sankara most probably was aware of the Sankhya scholars (due to their own inadequacy) trying to establish the supremacy of Sankhya over the Vedanta in the same way the followers of Madhvacharya have benn trying to establish the superiority of Dvaita Vedanta over the Advaita Vedanta, for several centuries. So he put them in proper place. However the fact remains that Vedanta takes over at the stage the Sankhya leaves and that is the true spirit of Indian philosophy. I should  not expect that all the scholars of Indian philosophy would agree with me on that. 


One thing the scholars should keep in mind that the terminology of Sankhya and Yoga is not necessarily the same in every respect. I have mentioned earlier about the "Tanmatra" of Sankhya being the same as the  "Sukshma-bhoota" of Vedata.  Yoga's Ishvara with the vachaka of "Om" is none but the Apara-Brahmana and so also the phrase "Ishvara Asiddha' of Sankhya is not any different from "Brahman is Anirvachaniya".

Regards,
Sunil KB


________________________________
 From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
To: Advaita List <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 8:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Sankhya and Yoga can give Moksha?
 


> role of Sankhya. How could he? His criticism of Sankhya  has to be taken 
> in that spirit only. Sankhya (Samyak 
> khyati) is the Viveka khyati of Yoga and it  means an 
> intellectual approach. The role of Sankhya in reaching the Advaitic 
> goal cannot be ignored. That is why the Svetasvatara upanishad  (6.13) talks about Sankhya 

Well, yes and no. gItA verse 3.3 says, jnAnayogena sAMkhyAnAM
and karmayogena yoginAm. Here, the word sAMkhya is synonymous
with vedAntic jnAna. Which is why brahmasUtra bhAshya 2.1.3 says
that the word sAMkhya means vaidikam eva jnAnam and yoga means
vaidikam eva dhyAnam. Are these vaidika jnAna and vaidika dhyAna
the same as the sAMkhya of ISvarakRshNa's sAMkhya-kArikA and the
yoga of patanjali? The answer is that there is an overlap, but there 
are parts of these smRti-s that are not exactly in tune with vedAnta.
That is why Sankara bhagavatpAda very clearly says that the smRti
texts belonging to these darSana-s are accepted partially, as per the
agreement or otherwise with what is said in the upanishat texts. 

Merely saying "sAMkhya" or "yoga" without understanding the text and
the context in which these terms are used becomes problematic. Part
of what Sankara bhagavatpAda does throughout his bhAshya-s is to
elucidate the context and set aside what is not in tune with vedAnta
and accept that portion of those smRti-s that is in tune with vedAnta. 

> 2)
> Secondly coming to Jayamangala, itends as follows.
> 
> इति श्रीमत्परमहंसपरिव्राजकाचार्य श्रीगोविन्दभगवत्पुज्यपाद् शिष्येण
> श्री संकर भगवता कृता सांख्यसप्रतिटीका समाप्ता
> 
> This means that Mamahopadhyaya Gopinath Kaviraj, despite his being a very great Bengali scholar, could have been  wrong in saying that Jayamangala could have been. a Buddhist text.
> 

You have misunderstood what I wrote about Gopinath Kaviraj and the
text called jayamangalA. 

I will quote again what I wrote in my previous email, with emphasis. 

"Gopinath Kaviraj's publication ... argued forcefully that the author is the
same as the one who wrote a commentary on vAtsyAyana's kAmasUtra,
also called jayamangalA."
... ...
"Other scholars have opined that the author of the jayamangalA was
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
probably a buddhist."

And to say that an author could have been a buddhist does not make
the text a buddhist one. 

The commentary called jayamangalA on the sAMkhyakArikA-s is not
considered as a work of Sankara bhagavatpAda either by the living
tradition of advaita vedAnta or contemporary independent academic 
scholarship. It has not been included in the complete set of Sankara's
works published, for instance, by the Sringeri Matha a century ago,
although "sAMkhya-traya-pratipAdaka" is one of the time-honored
titles of the Sringeri Acharya-s. Obviously, what the tradition means
by the word sAMkhya in the context of vedAnta is different from the
separate dualistic darSana called sAMkhya and the texts belonging
to that darSana.

I would like to ask you if you have seen the above text colophon in
an original manuscript or only in printed editions. What is said in a
printed edition is highly suspect. It does not necessarily reflect the
reality of the handwritten manuscripts.

Vidyasankar
                                             
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