[Advaita-l] Sanskrit translation of means of liberation contd

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> I would be grateful if
> anybody has found the exact ancient reference to the verse tyāga eva hi sarveṣām
> mokṣasādhanam uttamam etc, otherwise we are left with one of
> 3 possibilities: 
> 
> 
> 1) It belongs to an ancient work now lost and, by
> implication, a number of repeated verses in the vartikas and Naishkarmya Siddhi
> that have not been traced, may belong to now lost ancient texts, 
> 
> 2) It is composed by Suresvara himself and he chooses to use
> it frequently, 

While no further along in identifying a source, I would also vote for the first choice
above. Also, I have noticed that when making quotations in a poetic work, a certain
amount of freedom seems to have been allowed, even when the source is Sruti.

e.g. I seem to remember a verse beginning, asanneva bhaved vidvAn asad brahmeti
veda cet, which is obviously a reworded quotation of TU asanneva sa bhavati | asad
brahmeti veda cet |. 
 
> 
> 3) It opens up difficult questions on authorship of the
> various works of Suresvara known as the vartikas and Naishkarmya Siddhi and
> also whether interpolations and corruptions have entered the texts over time. 
> Many may know already of the observations that BSB and BUB have different
> styles from each other, and that the interepretation of certain Shruti verses
> in the Isopanishad Bhashya differ from
> the interpretation given in BSB etc.

I have not seen anyone seriously delving into the authorship question for the works
of sureSvara. A project on this, with some scholarly focus on manuscript identification
and unraveling their transmission lineages, along with trying to identify style markers
for sureSvara's versifying, would be wish come true!
 
Regards,
Vidyasankar