[Advaita-l] manyu-sUktaM - as per dvaita siddhAnta

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015, Srinath Vedagarbha wrote:

> Your question of who is capable of determining "esoteric" meanings has
> shifted to form of new question -- who is capable of determining which
> sampradAya is the correct "tradition".
> 
> It would be useless to fight on which sampradaaya is anterior to which other
> sampradaaya. Often this was labored either based on fogy history given to us
> by foreigners, or based on absence of references about other pUrva-paxa
> sampradAya in sidhAnta texts (yes some takes this approach of absence of
> evidence as evidence of absence! ).

That both Ramanuja and Madhva take elaborate pains to criticize 
Shankaracharya while he takes no notice of them is a fact and it proves 
the priority of Advaita Vedanta by the logic of Gotama as much as the 
logic of Aristotle but the case is stronger than simple absence of 
evidence.  Shankaracharya does take pains to critique people like 
Bhartraprapancha who he recognizes as Vedantins albeit with incorrect 
beliefs.  So we know that there were non-advaita traditions of Vedanta. 
However there is nothing to indicate any relationship between those early 
traditions and the Vaishnava Vedantins of today.  On the contrary in the 
chaturvyuhadhikarana Shankaracharya while showing due respect to the 
practices of the Bhagavatas explicitly notes their philosophy is not 
Vedic.  It fell to Yamuna the predecessor of Ramanuja to plead for the 
Vedic bona fides of the Bhagavata movement and we can easily assert 
without resorting to foggy foreigners that Yamuna comes after 
Shankaracharya.

> When we have explicit apurusheya
> shruti's position itself about this matter, all those extraneous criteria
> for determining which sampradAya is correct one, is pretty useless and would
> be flawed if one uses.

Others have already answered this part.  I will only repeat that should 
a follower of Vishnu Bhagavan or one of His manifestations wish to see 
the devatas of the mantras as manifestations of the one parabrahman in the 
form of his ishtadevata there is nothing wrong with it but the same 
privilege is also given to the Shaivas Shaktas, Ganapatyas and Sauras.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>