[Advaita-l] Ardhajaratiyam

[V Subrahmanian]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Venkatesh Murthy <vmurthy36 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Namaste
>
> Kindly explain how Adi Sankara has used this Ardhajaratiya rule in the
> Brahma Sutra Bhashya and Brihadaranyaka Upanisad Bhashya.
>
> --
> Regards
>
> -Venkatesh
>

In the Brahmasutra bhashya 1.1.6..19 (अस्मिन्नस्य तद्योगं शास्ति)  we have
the vAkyam:
idaM tviha vaktavyam - 'sa vA eSha
puruSho'nnarasamayaH.....prANamayaH...manomayaH...vijAnamayaH....(tai.up.
2.1,2,3,4) iti ca vikaaraarthe mayaTpravaahe sati, Anandamaya eva akalmAt *
ardhajaratIyanytaayena* kathamiva mayaTaH pAchuryArthatvaM
brahmaviShayatvaM cha AshrIyat iti.

Here Shankara is pointing out that while the Taittiriya upanishad, in the
four sections says: annamayaH, prANamayaH, manomayaH, vijnAnamayaH where
the meaning taken / accepted for the suffix 'mayaT' is *vikArartha, that
is, a transformation *(of anna, prANa, etc.), how is it admissible to
suddenly change the meaning of the suffix 'mayaT' in the term 'AnandamayaH'
to mean* prAchuryArtha,  abundance* (of Ananda)?  Such an admission would
amount to something like 'fancying an old hag as having her one half
young'.

In other words, in a series of occurrences of the term 'mayaH' the
vikArArtha is admitted and at the end of the series the last occurrence of
the term 'mayaH' is treated as being in 'prAchuryArtha'.  This
inconsistency is what is called by that nyAyaH.

The idea is: an old woman cannot be taken as being young in part.  We
cannot refer to an old woman as  'she is only half old'.    This is called
'ardhajaratIyanyAyaH'.

If you can pl. provide the Brihadaranyaka bhashyam reference, maybe we can
give an explanation of that nyaya used there.

Regards,
subrahmanian.v