[Advaita-l] Shiva is Supreme (was Re: Shankara authenticates Shiva)

[S Jayanarayanan]

D Gayatri dgayatrinov10 at gmail.com wrote:
 
> > There are literally DOZENS of instances in the Mahabharata, with HUNDREDS of shlokas that
> > propound the Supremacy of Shiva. There must have been a conspiracy of epic proportions to
> > interpolate so many shlokas in so many locations in the Mahabharata!
>  
> I want to make a point here about the Mahabharata itself. I want to
> keep this point removed from the main debate. The shortest recension
> of the Mahabharata has around 80000+ verses, while the longest
> recension has around 120000+ verses. So between the shortest and
> longest recensions, there are 40000 verses which are complete
> interpolation. (That is almost half of the shortest recension).
>  
> Even if we take that 10% of the current shortest version of Mbh to be
> an interpolation, that still gives us 8000 verses in the Mahabharata,
> that would be interpolations. So let us not be surprised by the
> magnitude of the interpolations in the Mahabharata.
> 
 
Not so fast! There is yet another possibility - that there have been ELIMINATIONS from
rather than interpolations into the original text! For you to claim that the larger text
must have interpolations is invalid, because it is a definite possibility that the
shorter text had eliminations from the original text!
 
But you're missing the more important point - even the smallest of extant Mahabharata texts
has the following references to Shiva as the Supreme:
  (i) The Most Powerful Weapon in the Universe - the Pashupatastra - is in the custody of Shiva.
  (ii) The Vedic Hymn most glorified is the "Rudram", which is addressed to Shiva.
  (iii) Krishna is repeatedly hailed as the Greatest Devotee of Shiva.
 
In fact, every single quote in this link on Supreme Shiva is present in the BORI critical edition:
 
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/articles/Shiva.pdf