[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Dear Sunilji,

In general, if you want to answer questions of textual and historical
import, you have to have a more solid basis first to ask questions, not
just some doubts and hunches. Secondly, you should try not to force fit
data to preconceived conclusions.

It looks like you are determined, somehow or the other, to come up with a
different author for the gItAbhAshya than Adi Sankara. So, in your
estimation, it must be anybody else, either an entirely mythical and
non-historical abhinava Sankara or the historical vidyASankara who has
traditionally not been known to have written any texts at all.

Our list member, Niranjan Saha, has already shared with you, by private
email, a very recent paper surveying the academic scholarly output
regarding the authorship of the gItAbhAshya. Please read it with some care.

I don't understand why you would throw out both the tradition that says
that this bhAshya is by Adi Sankara and also the bulk of the modern
scholarship that concludes that this traditional attribution is right.
Instead, you are basing your argument upon a solitary paper that is now
quite outdated, along with a highly speculative attempt at reconstructing
history. The entire exercise is very strange indeed!

Best regards,
Vidyasankar
On Jan 1, 2017 2:29 AM, "Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l" <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Namaste Venkataraghavanji,
>
> Thank you for your mail. may I request you kindly to send me a photocopy
> of  T.K. Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper titled "BhAskara on the
> Gita" presented at the GIta SamIkshA conference held in Tirupati on March,
> 1970.
>
> Would you think that Abhinava Shankara, another very famous avatara of Adi
> Shankaracharya, could have written the Bhagavadgita bhashya, if and when
> all evidences confirm that  a fresh bhashya on the Bhagavadhita was needed
> to be written by Sri Vidyashankara to refute  Sri Ramabujacharya's
> Bhagavadgitabjashya, as one advaitic  bhashya was already therein Sri
> ramanujacharya's time. This will be satisfy the objection that language
> style of the Bhagavadgitabhshya was different for Adi Shankara's other
> bhashyas.
>
> Tthe Bhagavadgitabhashya does not have 745 verses, even though the Gita
> press edition of the Mahabharata clearly shows that the Bhagavad Gita had
> 745 verses. One possibility is that Sri Vidyashankara had just to refute
> only the version with 700 verses on which Sri Ramanujacharya wrote his
> bhashya.  But if any one before Sri Ramanujacharya wrote the advaitic
> bhashya on the Bhagavadgita, then the question as to why the 45 verses were
> omitted still stands,
>
> Regards,
> Sunil KB
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sat, 12/31/16, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
> vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara
>  To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
> vedanta.org>
>  Date: Saturday, December 31, 2016, 10:06 AM
>
>  Namaste,
>  One thing we can use to determine objectively
>  if Shankara bhagavatpAda
>  wrote the gIta
>  bhAshya, or if it was a later advaitin in his tradition,
>  is
>  to see if there is any evidence from
>  other commentators that are
>  chronologically
>  proximate to him.
>
>  It is
>  widely accepted that BhAskara, a bhedAbhedavadin, who is
>  said to have
>  lived around c. 800 AD
>  ("BhAskara the VedAntin", Daniel Ingalls), is a
>  close contemporary of Shankaracharya. BhAskara
>  quotes Shankara's brahma
>  sUtra bhAshya
>  quite extensively in his own bhAshya to this prasthAna.
>  BhAskara, in turn, is quoted by VAcaspati
>  Mishra in BhAmati. Therefore, he
>  must have
>  lived between Shankara's and VAcaspati's
>  lifetimes.
>
>  Now turning to
>  the question if there are any references to Shankara's
>  gIta
>  bhAshya in any of BhAskara's works.
>  Unfortunately, not too many surviving
>  works
>  of BhAskara are available to us. Thankfully, there are some
>  fragments
>  available from his gIta bhAshya (9
>  chapters of his gIta bhAshya are
>  published
>  by the Benares Sanskrit University, edited by Dr.
>  Subhadropadhyaya, 1964).
>
>  In the few fragments of the BhAskara gIta
>  bhAshya available today, there is
>  one
>  interesting comment he makes when commenting on sloka
>  2.21:
>  वेदाविनाशिनं
>  नित्यं य एनमजमव्ययम्
>  ।
>  कथं स पुरुषः
>  पार्थ कं घातयति हन्ति
>  कम् ॥ २१ ॥
>
>  These are Shankara's words in his
>  commentary to the bhAshya: हेत्वर्थस्य
>  च
>  अविक्रियत्वस्य
>  तुल्यत्वात् *विदुषः
>  सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध एव
>  प्रकारणार्थः
>  अभिप्रेतो भगवता*
>  ।
>
>  Turning to BhAskara, he
>  quotes Shankara in the bhAshya to the same verse:
>  अत्र क्लेशभीरव:
>  केचित् स्वमतं
>  भगवत्यारोप्य
>  वर्णयन्ति *विदुष:
>  सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध
>  एव
>  प्रकरणार्थोSभिप्रेतो
>  भगवता* इति.
>
>  In commenting on this verse, BhAskara
>  criticises Shankara's bhAshya by
>  saying
>  that Shankaracharya is simply attributing his own views onto
>  Lord
>  Krishna when he says "in this
>  context, Krishna's view is that for the wise
>  person total renunciation of karma is
>  prescribed".
>
>  Its quite
>  clear here that BhAskara is quoting Shankara's gIta
>  bhAshya
>  verbatim. Given that BhAskara also
>  quotes Shankara in his Brahma sUtra
>  bhAshya,
>  we can conclude that the Shankara that wrote the gIta
>  bhAshya must
>  have lived at the same time as
>  the Shankara that wrote the brahma sUtra
>  bhAshya. A reasonable simplification to make is
>  that it is indeed the same
>  person.
>
>  (The above references to
>  BhAskara's bhAshya and his quotation of
>  Shankara's
>  bhAshya are from T.K.
>  Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper titled "BhAskara on
>  the
>  Gita" presented at the GIta
>  SamIkshA conference held in Tirupati on March
>  1970. The proceedings of the conference have
>  been published by Sri
>  Venkateswara
>  University, Tirupati. It is available in electronic form
>  at
>  archive.org)
>
>  Regards,
>  Venkatraghavan
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