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

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Sun, 6 May 2012, Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:

> I heard from Dr. Gerald J. Larson. He says that the best current 
> discussion may be found in his volume, "Samkhya: A Dualist Tradition in 
> Indian Philosophy," Volume 4, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies.

As luck would have it I have this book.  Here is an excerpt from 
the entry on jayamanagala written by Ram Shankar Bhattacharya.

"The date and authorship of this commentary is unknown.  It contains a 
good deal of material, however, from the commentaries already dealt with 
(namely, Paramartha's Chinese version[1], the samkhyavrtti, 
samkhyasaptativrtti, and Gaudapadas bhashya.)"

...

"Gopinath Kaviraj, in his introduction to the printed edition of 
jayamangala by H. Sharma, suggests that the author of the jayamangala may 
be the same as the author of two other texts (also called jayamangala,) 
namely, tha kamandakanitisara and the kama sutra.  Moreover on the basis 
of the benedictory verse of Jayamangala which includes the expression 
'lokottaravadinam pranamya munim' Kaviraj concludes the author was a 
Buddhist.  In a later article, however, entitled 'Literary Gleanings 
Jayamangala'[2] Kaviraj offers yet another suggestion.  He argues that the 
author of all of these commentaries called Jayamangala is a certain 
Shankararya of the Payyur family[3] who lived some time in the 14th 
century.  The name Shankararya became somewhat garbled in the process of 
manuscript transmission and, therefore, comes to appear in the colophon of 
our extant version of the jayamangala as Shankaracharya (the great 
Vedantin.)  Moreover, argues Kaviraj, this Shankararya of the 14th century 
is very possibly also the author of the yogasutrabhashyavivarana, a text 
that is also wrongly attributed (according to Gopinath Kaviraj) to the 
great Shankaracharya."

[1] There is a version of the Samkhyakarikas with commentary in the 
Mahayana Tripithaka.  It was translated into Chinese by one Paramartha in 
567-569 AD.  The commentary is said in some traditions to be by the great 
Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu while others say he wrote a refutation not a 
commentary.  Regardless, that the Buddhists considered it important enough 
to include in their scriptures is telling don't you think?

As the sanskrit original is lost, the extant version we have today is 
reconstructed from this Chinese version.  The Chinese name retranslated 
into Sanskrit is Suvarnasaptati ("70 golden verses.")  This Suvarnasaptati 
and the other commentaries mentioned above show signs of being variants of 
one original commentary now lost.

[2] Quarterly Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society (October 
1927.)


[3] Of Keralite Nambudiri Brahmanas.



On Fri, 11 May 2012, Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:

> This could be also the reason why some people think that following this 
> exposure of Sankara to the Kusumastra-shastra he wrote a commentary 
> called "Jayamangala" on the Kamasutra and also wrote another book on 
> Tantra-shatra.

Interestingly in light of the information above, the  name of the author 
of the Jayamangala tika on kama sutra in the edition I have is 
clearly said to be Yashodhar.

I don't see how he could be confused with Shankaracharya nor have I heard
of any traditions suggesting they were one and the same.  However Amaru or
Amaruka the author of the collection of erotic/romantic poems called
Amarushataka is said to be the Kashmiri king whose body was taken over.


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