[Advaita-l] Shankara authenticates Shiva as the son of Brahma

[Venkatraghavan S]

I don't think you have understood my point.

Indra did not use the neuter gender to refer to Uma's husband, he used it
to refer to Yaksha. Indra makes no reference to Uma's husband at all.

Only Shankara makes reference to Uma's husband as Sarvajna Ishvara, and not
when he is talking about Yaksha, when he is talking about Uma always being
associated with Him. And there is no gender confusion there at all.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On 15 Aug 2016 7:58 a.m., "D Gayatri" <dgayatrinov10 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Shri Venkatraghavanji
>
>
> > If you are saying that because the neuter gender is used in the pronoun
> > (एतत्), Siva cannot be referred to because he is male,
>
>
> I am saying, if Indra thought that the companion of Uma who was
> sarvajna Ishwara, was a male (being her *husband*), then he would not
> have used neuter gender to refer to the sarvajna Ishwara. I also
> invite you to check the translation of Swami Gambhirananda. He uses
> the neutral word "God" everywhere in this context for Ishwara and does
> not interpret it as Shiva. So your assumption that Ishwara here refers
> to Shiva is no more than speculation.
>
>
> and no masculine
> > entity can be referred to, then by that logic, the Upanishad cannot be
> > referring to ईश्वर as that Yaksha either - because the word ईश्वर is
> > masculine in gender too.
> >
> > However, that interpretation would be wrong, because Shankara repeatedly
> > says that the Yaksha is indeed ईश्वर only.
>
> Let me point out that yaksha can be used both in neuter and masculine
> gender.
>
> Having said that, consider the following -
>
> 1. ayam AtmA brahma - here Atman is masculine and brahman is neuter
> but there is no problem with Atman referring to brahman.
>
> 2. Mohini is Vishnu - here Mohini is feminine and Vishnu is masculine,
> but there is no problem with Mohini referring to Vishnu.
>
> 3. Brihannala is Arjuna - here Brihannala is (I think) feminine and
> Arjuna is masculine, but there is no problem with Brihannala referring
> to Vishnu
>
> Hence there is no problem with the word yaksha referring to the word
> Ishwara, even if the former is used in neuter gender.
>
> Regards
> Gayatri
>