[Advaita-l] Vedas are not apauresheya according to the Vedas ?

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Shri Rajaram,

Excuse me if I am blunt to ask you if you have missed some mails in the recent past. Sometime back I remember to have posted a verse from the Veda where it was shown that the ancient ones had their jijnashas and on contemplation they found the answers. Once an eternal truth is discovered is there any need for everybody to rediscover that? I think not. The wheel need not be reinvented again and again. The ancient sages were not gullibles to have accepted the revelations blindly. The question of pramana of the revlations were sorted out before incorporating them in the Veda. No intelligent person questions them the way no intelligent person questions whether atomic fission is possible or not. Having checked through their own contemplation thye ancient sages accepted the revelations and they became part of  the Veda. In order that the posterity remembers the the original discoverers of the Vedic truths or eternal laws, the names of the respective rishis
 have  been tagged to the hymns. That is the story of the way the revelataions came to  us in the form of the Veda.  

According to Vayu purana, the Original Veda was called the YajurVeda, which was later on divided by Vedavyasa into four Vedas as well as the fifth Veda. This he did as he found that it was not possible for all to master the entire original Veda. Then again the Veda, the Aranyakas and the upanishads were separated even though all were taught at the student days. The Grihasthashramis were to largely follow the Vedas (Karmakaanda), the Vanaprashthis would largely concentrate on the Aranyakas in order to understand the inner purport of the Vedic rituals and activities, which they performed during their grihashthashrama and finally the Upanishads were for the Sanyashis, for attaining the highest Vedantic knowledge of oneness with the Brahman and eventually realizing the oneness one with the Brahman. The progress from one ashrama to the other ashrama could be gradual but it need not be always be so as that depends also on one's past karma. Adi Sankaracharya
 took to sanyasha in the very young age itself.

The knowledge of the Veda was needed by Brahmaa (or call him Prakriti or Maya if you like) too for starting the creation and he prayed to Vishnu (or call him Narayana or Ishwara if you like) and the Vedas were originally revealed to him. 

Now, as regards the word "Apaurusheya" one cannot first coin a word and then try to see what it can mean or where it can fit in. One has  to coin a word when it is needed to mean or do something. As the revelations were not man-made but only acquired my man, these revelations were called apaurusheya. Your name is Rajaram but do you have any resemblance with the Rajaram who fought Ravana in the Treta yuga? Your name Rajaram was given to you as your identification but your parents did not try to make you to fit in that august name of Lord Ram. So also the Vedas were called apaurusheya to indicate their eternal status.

BTW, are you raising this issue of the aparusheyatva of the Veda only in the Advaita list or you are raising the same in the Visishtadvaita list or the Dvaita list or the other Vedic lists. If you are doing it only in the Advaita list would you mind telling us, why you are trying to do this particular favor to the Advaita list only ?


Sincerely,
Sunil KB


________________________________
 From: "rajaramvenk at gmail.com" <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 12:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vedas are not apauresheya according to the Vedas ?
 
There can be different reasons why one  accepts (or rejects) vedas as a pramana but  all reasons are not equally well thought through. 

If pauresheya vedas are a pramana, then we can as well accept jesus or mohammad as rishis and give their teaching equal weight as you'd to the vedas. 

But even a Sankara established siddhanta on the basis of shruti and smrti. And even smrti  is not valid if it contradicts shruti because the latter is apauresheya and hence pramana. Otherwise, there is no difference between the two

Therefore, Shruti, if apauresheya, holds a unique place for all schools of thought.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 08:48:58 
To: Advaita List<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
    <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vedas are not apauresheya according to the Vedas ?



No, I am trying to show you how acceptance of veda prAmANya need not be contingent upon an
acceptance of veda apaurusheyatva. This is especially so for the general person, which may not
be particularly committed to a specific line of traditional thinking.

Stepping outside of the Sankara bhAshya for a second, all that is required for taking the veda as
pramANa is to accept that Rshi-s lived and transmitted some portion of the veda to their immediate
disciples, which then has come down to us today in a tradition. This minimum level of acceptance
of the existence of the Rshi-s is enough to say that the veda is pramANa for someone calling himself
or herself a Hindu in today's world. Stepping back into the bhAshya and the advaita vedAnta tradition,
we can talk about the special powers of the Rshi-s and other things, but all that is icing on the cake,
so to speak.

Whether the Rshi-s composed these themselves or whether they got it from ISvara, who composed
it first, or whether the Rshi-s just intuited an unauthored veda in their meditative states, none of this
needs to matter *as far as accepting the prAmANya of the veda* is concerned. In other words, one
need not commit to an apaurusheya vs. not-apaurusheya stance to accept the veda as a valid source
of knowledge. That is how both a naiyyyAyika and a mImAMsaka can accept the same veda as pramANa.
The typical nyAya stance about the veda being authored by ISvara is not a necessary condition for the
naiyyAyika to accept veda prAmANya. The typical mImAMsA stance about veda apaurusheyatva is not
a necessary condition for the mImAMsaka to accept veda prAmANya. In both cases, an acceptance of
veda prAmANya comes first, all these mutual disagreements about apaurusheyatva vs. ISvara as 
author come later.

That is how, a vedAntin, especially an advaitin, can accomodate both views in different ways. We have
been through all this before on this list, so I won't repeat myself now.

Regards,
Vidyasankar


> To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> From: rajaramvenk at gmail.com
> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 08:39:39 +0000
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vedas are not apauresheya according to the Vedas ?
> 
> It is a good argument but not without fault I'm afraid. You have to prima-facie believe that historical rishis had special power as a result of which cycle after cycle, they perceive the same mantras and bring them to competent people. But mimamsakas have already argued against reliance on even great men and for that matter a sarvajna purusha. 
> 
> They have taken pains to show that the flow of knowledge is an invariable constant. And speech only reveals a word that exists, though not as an entity, before being spoken. The mimamsa position is one that Sankara also accepts and rishis, due to special powers, discover them. 
> 
> If flow of knowledge in veda mantras is a result of pratyaksha, then aham brahmasmi will be an articulation of perception by rishis of entities that are by definition beyond perception for anyone - the self and brahman. 
> Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
> Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:24:03 
> To: Advaita List<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
> <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Vedas are not apauresheya according to the Vedas ?
> 
> 
                          
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