[Advaita-l] Mandana Mishra

[subhanu saxena]

Bhaskar wrote: BTW, I read somewhere that even mandana mishra too talks about the advaitins who propagate the theory of avidyOpadAnakAraNa !!  Do you have 
any reference from this brahmasiddhi prabhujiNamasteThere are two important references in Brahma Siddhi:brahmakāṇda Page 10 a reference to the tradition we find later in vivaraṇam of ignorance as upādāna kāraṇam : tathā choktam avidyopādānabhedavādibhih "anādiraprayojanā avidyā" itiSo it is said by those who speak of the difference from ignorance as upādāna kāraṇam "ignorance is beginningless and without purpose"
brahmakāṇda page 26 direct reference to a separate school that is Shankara's:tathāparaih "adhyāropāpavādābhyām niṣprapancham prapanchyate"And so say others "that which is beyond the manifested is made manifest by the method of false attribution and retraction"You can see here a very early direct separation of the school of Shankara and the school that later become known as vivaraṇam
Maṇdaṇa is worthy of study as a senior figure in the advaita tradition who forged his own path. Leaving aside the historical theories of who he was, the study of the similarity anddifferences between him and Suresvara and Shankara are highly instructive (eg tarka kāṇda page 42 on paurvāparyatā). Some of his views I notice have also been wrongly attributed by some to SSS (eg seed sprout causality)RegardsSubhanu