[Advaita-l] mithyaa / anirvachaniiya and asattva

[Srinath Vedagarbha]

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Naresh Cuntoor <nareshpc at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Replying to both Sri Sadananda's and Sri Subramanian's notes.]
>
> Pranam.
>
> >> "Vandhyaa putraH is logical contradiction "
>
> I don't see how it is a logical contradiction. Isn't it simply a
> restatement?
> 1. A woman who does not have children is called vandhyaa
> 2. A woman who does not have children (i.e, vandhyaa) does not have a son.
>
> So where is the contradiction here?
>
>
>

It seems you are splitting vandhyAputraH as vandhya + aputraH, and hence
for you the meaning of that pada looks like "vandhyaa does not have a putra" .
 In such a split it is indeed tautological.

But vedAntin does not mean that kind of split. It has to be split as
vandhya + putra (that putra of vandhya). If you split this way, it yields
to a contradiction of type "vandhya's son".

Going further, if you were to assert a full sentence "vandhya's son does
not exist", it would then a tautological position. But just the word
vandhyAputra does not make it tautological.

-Srinath